How do you streamline household work? A case study on weeknight dinners.
Sadly, homemade gnocchi didn’t make the list of dinners. Photo courtesy of Alok Deshpande.
A few weeks ago, Jason and I decided to move out to Park City, UT (I know!) Because of the pandemic, we’d been staying with my parents in Atlanta, and, eventually, we decided to break our lease in NYC. We also decided it would be fun to spend the rest of the summer and part of the fall in Park City, where there would be plenty of socially distant hiking available.
There was one problem I was worried about: in Atlanta, my wonderful mother had taken on all the cooking, so I had a ton more free time. I was able to work more (not only at my day job, but also this very blog!), and I was able to squeeze in a long workout and plenty of reading time. I honestly hadn’t realized how much time I spent per week thinking about and cooking dinner! When Jason and I started talking about moving to Park City, I was anxious about losing my newfound free time and started thinking about ways to streamline weeknight dinners. Here’s what I decided to try:
Meal plan: I know, I know, I’m very late to the meal planning party, but I can’t believe how much time this has saved me. Part of the problem was, in NYC, we lived right above an excellent grocery store, and it was easy to find a recipe at 4 pm and start cooking by 5, even if we didn’t have everything. While it was fun to make exactly what I wanted that day, in practice, this approach meant our fridge was filled with lots of random ingredients that I used once and never thought about again, and daily grocery runs.
I now sit down on Sundays and plan out the week before going to the grocery store. A bonus to weekly planning is I can prep materials in batches: pretty much every dinner I make involves copious amounts of garlic, so I can chop a bunch the first time and use it for the next few days.
Leftover nights and cooking in batches: I never used to have leftover nights because it felt a bit like cheating. This had two consequences: one, our freezer was literally overflowing with single-size servings of dinners (we still have frozen leftovers from NYC in our freezer here in Park City) and, two, I was running myself ragged every day to make a new dinner every evening. I’ve now implemented at least one (sometimes two!) leftover/freezer nights a week, which has made life significantly easier. I also now make double batches of every meal and, because most of our leftovers end up in the freezer, I try to pick meals that are freezer-friendly.
Prep throughout the day: Working from home has the benefit of being able to prep throughout the day. This definitely doesn’t always happen, but my goal is to get to 5 pm with only the cooking left and all the chopping/blanching/boiling done.
Buy pre-made: In the interest of not losing my mind, I’ve started leaning more heavily on a few pre-prepped items: frozen vegetables and peeled garlic. Frozen vegetables have the additional benefit of reducing our food waste. And if I honestly added up the hours of my life I’ve wasted peeling garlic, I feel like I could’ve attended law school.
Allow shortcuts: Here’s a secret: I mostly cook Indian food, and I literally know one vegetable recipe. It works with basically any vegetable, and I just use a rotating cast of Indian spices to make sure it doesn’t ever taste the same (so far, Jason either hasn’t noticed or is too nice to point it out). Another example that horrified my siblings: there’s an Indian chicken dish I love (chicken biryani, basically baked chicken and rice) that is super complicated to make. Technically, you’re supposed to start with whole spices, roast and grind them yourself, brine and marinate bone-in chicken, caramelize onions, parboil rice, shred the chicken, and, to top it off, encase the entire dish in made-from-scratch dough so it properly steams. I’m exhausted just reading that, so, after begging for forgiveness for what I’m about to do, I marinate chicken in pre-made biryani spice mix with yogurt, ginger, and garlic, cook it, and call it a day (side note: Indian food is actually pretty flexible! Go to any Indian grocery store, pick some boxed spice mixes that look interesting - I like Shan - and follow the directions on the back. You really can’t mess anything up too much).
Have you ever tried any of the above? What other tricks have you used to streamline household work?