Over the years I have regularly read food writing and blog posts that make offhand remarks about how it's so easy to do prep or batch cooking on the weekend, and how it makes your life so much easier during the week. Sound familiar? Roast some veggies! Cook up a big pot of grains! Make a stew! Etc.
I have the same response to this oft-repeated sentiment that I do to people saying, "Oh, and just make a salad!", like that's no big thing. I don't know about you, but even on weekends when I have no formal plans, I usually have a lot of things I want to accomplish and if I want to carve out 3 hours (or even 1 hour) for non-meal cooking I'm going to have to do some planning, and something else that I wanted to do is going to fall by the wayside. As much as I love cooking, I don't want it to take over my regular weekend routine to that extent.
So instead I've started trying to develop cooking routines that fit in with our typical weekend schedule, at least on the weekends when we're just hanging around and have some time. On Saturday afternoon, I'll start dinner prep a bit early - say around 4:30 - to allow time to start a batch of bread dough, get potatoes in the oven to bake (Saturday night dinner at our house is invariably steak, Italian potatoes, and a vegetable or two, unless and sometimes even if we have guests), and make something sweet for that night's dessert and lunchboxes for the coming week. This week it was a batch of cupcakes:
One of which I had for breakfast dessert this morning - breakfast dessert is one of the perks of being an adult.
Sunday breakfast in our house alternates between pancakes and waffles, both of which involve a fair amount of down time during prep. I've got the routine down now to where I get them going, and while each batch is cooking I do things like empty the dishwasher, make a big batch of fruit salad (I started this in January as you can see here), and start a batch of homemade cereal in the slow cooker if I'm out (first mentioned here - my version uses 720g oats, 240ml canola/olive oil mixed, 180ml maple syrup, and lasts me about 2 weeks).
Today I made a start at adding another regular to the routine: I made a big kale salad for lunch. Having Miss B's Food Tech salad in the fridge reminded me how great it is to have something tasty and healthy waiting when you're hungry and too impatient to chop salad (see first point).
All of that leaves me feeling pretty well set up for the week, while still having had a weekend - after all, here I am updating my blog for the second week in a row! And I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon getting to know my sewing machine - I read the manual, figured out how to thread it, and started practicing straight seams on fabric I bought for a project about 3? (4?) years ago.
Inspired by this tutorial - which I forgot to look at before my first attempt, so not perfect. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to making this part of my weekend routine too!
Hope you got to spend the weekend doing whatever you like best.
I have the same response to this oft-repeated sentiment that I do to people saying, "Oh, and just make a salad!", like that's no big thing. I don't know about you, but even on weekends when I have no formal plans, I usually have a lot of things I want to accomplish and if I want to carve out 3 hours (or even 1 hour) for non-meal cooking I'm going to have to do some planning, and something else that I wanted to do is going to fall by the wayside. As much as I love cooking, I don't want it to take over my regular weekend routine to that extent.
So instead I've started trying to develop cooking routines that fit in with our typical weekend schedule, at least on the weekends when we're just hanging around and have some time. On Saturday afternoon, I'll start dinner prep a bit early - say around 4:30 - to allow time to start a batch of bread dough, get potatoes in the oven to bake (Saturday night dinner at our house is invariably steak, Italian potatoes, and a vegetable or two, unless and sometimes even if we have guests), and make something sweet for that night's dessert and lunchboxes for the coming week. This week it was a batch of cupcakes:
Sunday breakfast in our house alternates between pancakes and waffles, both of which involve a fair amount of down time during prep. I've got the routine down now to where I get them going, and while each batch is cooking I do things like empty the dishwasher, make a big batch of fruit salad (I started this in January as you can see here), and start a batch of homemade cereal in the slow cooker if I'm out (first mentioned here - my version uses 720g oats, 240ml canola/olive oil mixed, 180ml maple syrup, and lasts me about 2 weeks).
Today I made a start at adding another regular to the routine: I made a big kale salad for lunch. Having Miss B's Food Tech salad in the fridge reminded me how great it is to have something tasty and healthy waiting when you're hungry and too impatient to chop salad (see first point).
All of that leaves me feeling pretty well set up for the week, while still having had a weekend - after all, here I am updating my blog for the second week in a row! And I spent the better part of Saturday afternoon getting to know my sewing machine - I read the manual, figured out how to thread it, and started practicing straight seams on fabric I bought for a project about 3? (4?) years ago.
Hope you got to spend the weekend doing whatever you like best.
I agree completely about the salad thing, one of my pet peeves too! For me it’s not just the chopping but the washing and spinning, and if you’re doing a more complex salad for entertaining then it becomes one of those multi part recipes where you have to make three things before you start i.e. roast tomatoes, make dressing, wash and shred greens, toast croutons etc
ReplyDeleteAnd well done on the sewing, I’m still not quite sure how to even use my machine :)