The most consistent thing that I have seen with my friends and family is their complete lack of focus on how to approach menu planning and food preparation. I admit that I, too, was neglectful within my own kitchen, and as a result, there were multiple trips to the grocers, and I spent too frivolously on food that I wouldn’t make. I didn’t follow through with the quasi-formed, unarticulated plan.
I hated the feeling of wasting time, money, and food on a semi-regular basis. Grand plans for feasts, and homemade breads, and fresh oven baked pastries, all pipe dreams. Despite tremendous organization at work, I was failing to deliver any meaningful results at home. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the path to the kitchen is littered with “I could do that” and “We must try this new dish. It looks divine!”. It was infuriating to know that I had these technical skills, yet my own kitchen was a place of disarray and sorrow. Things needed to change.
During the pandemic, there was ample time to ponder, well, everything. I began to take a very critical eye to my kitchen at home and think about how I can be more efficient. Hubris made me believe that I was using the space effectively, but it was far from it.
From this point, I began to approach it as a professional kitchen. The scale is different, but all the same principles apply. You create a menu for the upcoming season (be it a month, week, or season), and then you implement the plan for execution. The sleeper has awakened!
Here’s the crazy thing; you already do this, but in an unorganized, chaotic manner. You may or may not go to the store with a list of what is needed or have some vague idea of what the menu for the week is, but not a clearly defined mechanism. This is where I step in to save you heartache.
Below is a sample template of what menu planning looks like on a super high level. Like the 30,000-foot view from the plane over the prairie. Just as a restaurant will say for this season’s menu, we need to have 2 chicken dishes, 2 beef options, a fish dish, a vegetarian option, and something left of field. This provides you with that matrix.
The themes here represent a diverse array of cuisines and styles. Feel free to change any and all of them to your family’s preference. This provides you with the basis for your week’s menu.
With this framework, your decision-making tree has been truncated. Instead of all the possible foods in the world to cook, you choose from the narrower theme of Americana or Italian. This brings the mental load down, so you can create a week’s menu in 30 minutes or less.
Don’t forget to ask for input from your family. You might get a teenager’s shoulder shrug, or the over-enthused list of everything known to humanity. Either way, it gives them agency to influence the week, and as an added benefit, you are not the sole proprietor that dictates the menu. No one likes a dictator.
Once done, post this on the fridge or the common area where everyone can see it. Doing this alleviates the pressure of being asked on a daily basis what’s for dinner tonight. Now you can point to the sheet. No second guessing of what’s on offer today!
This is the fulcrum by which you move the world. The kitchen is a complex place, full of processes that require knowledge for them to work properly. This can be intimidating if you have not been trained or guided on how to utilize them. Make this small change, and you will find that there is an easier way to manage your kitchen, and perhaps, one day love it.
This is the basis for how you begin to organize the rest of your kitchen, and how you will be able to implement changes that directly affect your wallet and pleasure cooking.
À votre santé!
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