The Reluctant Family Chef

I decided last year that I wanted to take more of the grocery shopping, meal planning, and cooking duties for the family. These have traditionally been tasks mostly managed by my wife, and I could tell the tasks were weighing on her, so it felt like a good place for me to step in.

I don’t have much experience planning for or preparing food — which is why my wife has taken most of the responsibility there. I can get by with a couple simple recipes, but overall, my skills are basic.

In this year-ish that I’ve been cooking more, I’ve had many triumphs, and just as many failures. And while the failures can be demotivating, I decided I wanted to channel that frustration into making things better for myself and others by writing down something of a cookbook.

This “book” will at first just be a place for me to take notes, but I hope for it to eventually contain a few things:

• General tips on cooking
• General tips on meal planning
• General tips on grocery shopping

In addition, I’ll obviously have recipes. These recipes will focus on a few key things:

• Recipes that are easy to make.
• Recipes that make a lot of food for leftovers.
• Recipes that exercise key cooking skills.
• Recipes that can be prepared rather “basic” to satisfy a child’s palette, but easily jazzed up for the adults (rice + veggie for kids, add a sauce to pour on for the adults’ servings).

I also want the recipes themselves to be well written. Some ideas I have:

• Have clearly labeled sections for things you can do before cooking (food prep), tools you’ll need, skills you’ll use.
• Explain well which things can be done in parallel, but don’t go too overboard with parallelism. This can be nerve wracking for a newbie (trust me, I know).
• Sections of the book focused on recipes that can be partially or fully prepped ahead of time.
• Sections of the book focused on TRUE basics (scrambled eggs, noodles, rice, etc.).
• Whenever an ingredient is mentioned within the instructions, also list its amount (this inspired by the brilliant Made With Lau).
• Include side dishes that can be mixed/matched with meals. Like, I’ve made this main course, now I need a vegetable to include in the meal. Here’s some easy ones.
• Reduce cost and food prep time by using dried or frozen versions of ingredients.
• Include cost of groceries used.
• Don’t shy away from posting modified versions of existing recipes.
• Be clear on which steps need to be exactly followed, and which can be fudged a bit.
• Explain measurements of things.
• Sides could just be some raw vegetables or fruit.

Kitchen gadget advice; worth it?

• Pressure cooker? Yes
• Slow cooker? Yes
• Rice cooker? Maybe
• Blender? Maybe
• Sharp knives? Yes