Make friends with your kitchen & cooking.
Food is healing. Food is medicine.
Your kitchen is one of the most essential rooms in your home. It’s where you prepare food and create dishes that nourish and sustain you and your family. When your kitchen is disorganized, and if you don’t have the right tools, it is challenging to prepare nutritious meals that will keep everyone healthy.
I don’t mind cooking and like creating delicious food for myself and others, especially when the food is straight from the garden or trying a new recipe from one of my favourite cookbooks. I am a messy cook and have had to learn ways to make my time in the kitchen more efficient through many trials and errors.
My desire to do things differently started in 2002. I was recovering from a severe bout of depression, and after returning to work after a 3-month medical leave, I started a new job within a month and moved.
After we moved, I insisted on making all of our meals and every week, I loaded up our fridge with fresh produce, even though we were drowning in unpacked boxes. And every week, I didn’t have the energy or motivation to cook, so we ordered take-out, and the produce would spoil. This unsustainable cycle went on for months! Thinking about the cost and waste still makes me cringe!
Luckily, I fully recovered from my depression and since then I’ve tried to organize my life and create some order in the kitchen.
Here are some tips that I learned along the way and from some of my favourite chefs.
Essential Kitchen Tools
A well equipped kitchen will safe you time and money.
Strainer.
Salad Spinner.
Good quality knives and a knife sharpener. You don’t need to spend much money, but ensure you have a chef’s and paring knife.
Peeler. A regular one to peel potatoes and a serrated one that creates julienne vegetables. The mandoline cutting tool is excellent for slicing and dicing.
A couple of cutting boards. Plastic cutting board pieces can break off and get into your food, ensure yours are made of bamboo or wood. If you eat animal products, prepare them on a cutting board just for them, and keep it separate from the board you use for vegetables.
Cookware-non-toxic, non-stick, avoid Teflon and try alternatives like Greenspan. Cast iron frying pans are also good.
High-quality blender. It is worth investing in. The Cadillac of blenders is Vitamix, and they are costly. I bought a refurbished Blendtec blender more than ten years, and it is still going strong. I use my blender daily for smoothies, sauces, and salad dressings.
High-quality food processor. Important for larger quantities of food and excellent for pureeing, chopping and mixing.
Magic bullet. Excellent for grinding coffee and flax seeds and making smaller amounts of dressing or sauces.
Mason Jars. Have a variety of sizes. They are perfect for storing rice, beans and flour and will keep salad dressing and sauces fresh.
Citrus juicer. Efficiently extracts the juice of lemons and limes.
Garlic crusher.
Grocery Shopping
Don’t leave home without a detailed grocery list.
1) Plan your meals for the week. I have a hard time with this one as I usually don’t plan meals unless we have someone over for dinner. I have a sense of what I’ll be cooking for the week, which works for me.
2) Create a list. This is obvious and often overlooked. We try to make a very detailed shopping list every week, review it, and check what’s on sale. When we’re rushed, we’ll make a haphazard list or skip it entirely and this guarantees that things will get forgotten or we’ll purchase things we don’t need.
3) Shop on the same day every week. This creates a good habit. We shop on Thursdays, the day after we receive the sale flyers, and to avoid the weekend crowds. We do our best to ensure our Thursday afternoons are free to unpack and organize our food.
4) Wash and prepare produce before it goes into the fridge. This is one of the most critical time savers. If you place your produce in the refrigerator, unwashed and unprepared, you significantly increase the likelihood of it spoiling. Wash all your greens and salad stuff, and ensure to use a salad spinner before you place your veggies in a glass container or Ziplock bag. If they are not dry, they will start to spoil right away. Place a paper towel with each bag/container of veggies to absorb moisture. They will last longer.
I also prepare celery, cucumbers and carrots, so some healthier snack options are always available.
5) Check your fridge while unpacking, take note of any veggies that look like they are about to spoil, and ensure that you eat them soon.
Take advantage of what’s available.
This time of year, there is an abundance of tomatoes, zucchini, squash, and eggplant. Buy them in bulk and commit to making large batches of stews, soups, and chilli.
This amount of cooking takes organization and commitment and is so worth it in the end. When I make this much food, I block off an afternoon and listen to a podcast or binge-watch something to help pass the time. I plan on a big cook this weekend and will be excited to have a freezer full of stews, soup and chilli.
You can freeze almost anything.
Once you've made these large dishes, put them in the freezer, preferably in a glass container and ensure to leave space for expansion. Label and date the container.
Some foods will fare better than others once thawed. You may not be able to use your frozen veggies for salads or roasting, but there are plenty of ways to use them in cooked dishes such as pasta, soups, stews and casseroles. The best vegetables to consider are corn, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, squash and winter greens such as spinach, kale, chard and collards. Onions, peppers, celery and herbs can also be frozen. There’s not much advantage in freezing veggies with a high-moisture content — this includes cucumbers, cabbage, radishes, mushrooms and lettuce, which would be waterlogged and mushy once thawed. Source
You should also stock your freezer with healthy, easy options that you can place in the oven. We always have Amy’s burritos, Daiya pizzas, and veggie burgers in our freezer that can quickly be warmed up in the oven.
Stock your pantry and keep it organized.
Our pantry contains various flours, sugars, nuts, legumes, and rice. It also includes cans of Amy’s soups and beans, which can quickly become a meal on busy days.
Tips for following recipes and cooking.
Read the recipe. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve started to make a dish, only to realize later that I skipped a step or forgot an important ingredient. Read it twice to ensure that you are not missing anything.
Gather all the ingredients and tools you need before starting the recipe. This makes things easier to organize.
Keep your compost container close by, or use a large bowl to discard produce waste.
Always double or triple the recipe so you have leftovers you can eat the next day and maybe even the day after.
If you are hosting a dinner, start cooking days in advance. When we lived in Toronto, we often hosted “Orphan Christmas,” a large feast of anywhere from 10 to sometimes over 20 people. I learned many valuable lessons: make your main dishes days in advance and don’t allow too many helpers in the kitchen.
When you want to eat out, or order take out, avoid fast food places like McDonald's or Wendy's and locate a few local establishments offering healthier options.
Keep it simple. Elaborate, complicated recipes with obscure ingredients are not worth your time and effort. For easy recipes, I highly recommend the Minimalist Baker
Buy organic, when possible, to reduce your exposure to pesticides. EWG’s Clean 15 & Dirty Dozen pesticide guide.
No doubt cooking your meals takes more time than eating out or ordering takeout. But the rewards are enormous, from saving money to ensuring that what enters your body is nourishing and healthy.
If you get organized with your list-making, grocery shopping and cooking, you will be prepared to cook from scratch and have healthy options available when you don’t feel like cooking. Healthy eating is directly connected to a healthy life.
It took me years to acquire many of our kitchen tools. I’m still a messy cook, but much more organized and when I fail to plan, I plan to fail and end up eating crappy food.
Please leave a comment below with some of your kitchen tricks and tips.
Be well & eat well.
Anita
DISCLAIMER; The information provided on County Yoga Loft’s website blog is for general health care informational purposes only. All information on the site is provided in good faith. However, it should not replace consultation or advice from physicians and other healthcare practitioners. The use or reliance of any information on this site is solely at your own risk.
