The Chef Next Door
Category: yourchichome(Meal) Plan of Attack
O.K. We’ve all heard it a million times. If you want to get dinner on the table for your family every night of the week, all it takes is a little planning, right? But where do you start? I’m a professionally trained chef and at-home mom. But until recently, even I didn’t know how to tackle this seemingly easy task. So let me share some the tactics I’ve discovered for planning weeknight meals a little less stressful.
Pick a protein, any protein. One night have chicken, the next beef, then pork, then chicken again, and one night fish. One night do pasta with no protein. Another night try salads with tons of veggies and beans. To keep any meal balanced, think in terms of each containing a protein, a vegetable and a starch, such as potatoes, rice or a whole grain. In today’s carb-conscious world, however, you could certainly double up on the veggies and eliminate the starch for many of your meals.
By varying the "main" ingredient in the meal, you’ll be less likely to be bored with the daily grind of cooking. And your family will appreciate the variety.
Method acting. Varying your cooking method can also keep things more interesting. If, every night of the week, you sautéed whatever you were making for dinner, chances are you would get pretty tired of it. And you’d go through your sauté pans faster than you can say flambé. Bake a casserole one night. The next do a stir-fry. After that, grill if the weather is nice. Then broil a fillet of fish. This will keep you using all the parts of your kitchen, as well as put your pans, bakeware, and brains to work.
A cut above. Do you find that you’re bored with pork chops? Try tenderloin, ham, a roast or ground pork. Tired of boneless, skinless chicken breasts? (And who isn’t, by the way.) Buy bone-in, skin-on breasts the next time. You would be amazed at how much the bone and skin help to keep the meat moist. Try some thighs or wings. Why not roast a whole chicken yourself! It’s much easier than you may think.
As for beef, there are cuts for broiling, grilling, sautéing, stir-frying…you name it, there’s a cut for it. Most grocery stores now even tell you, right on the label, the best cooking method for the cut of beef. Expand your horizons beyond ground round to eye round steak, a low-fat cut that is best braised.
Crossing the line. Cross-utilization of ingredients is essential in a professional kitchen. In a fine-dining restaurant I worked in, we had a strip steak on the menu. After cutting the steaks from a loin of beef, we used the scraps in an appetizer of Vietnamese-style lettuce wraps. You’ve paid for the entire loin of beef, so you’d better use it!
The same holds true for that bunch of cilantro you bought for the guacamole for tacos tonight. You probably won’t use the whole bunch. Find another recipe for later in the week that also calls for cilantro. It can be as easy as searching "cilantro" on www.epicurious.com.
Recipes, recipes, recipes! I’m shocked when I hear that a woman puts pressure on herself to come up with a complete dinner for her family all off the top of her head. Again, I went to culinary school, and even I don’t do that. In a word, recipes are GOOD. Of course, some of them may not be to your liking, but that is why you try them out.
Pick up a cooking magazine at the checkout line. Take it home and look it over, and if you see something you want to try, tear out the page and give it a shot. If it’s a hit, keep the recipe in a folder to make again. It not, toss it and keep looking for more. Magazines, cooking and general interest titles, can be a great source for new recipes and meal ideas. The internet, cookbooks and newspapers can also serve as inspiration. (More on recipe sources in a future installment. Stay tuned.)
Take a break! Remember, you don’t have to cook every night. One night you can plan to serve leftovers. One night you can order pizza. One night could be for canned soup and sandwiches. Your local market is also full of frozen and/or pre-made options for dinner.
My daughter loves "make your own pizza" night. Buy the pre-made crusts, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and some toppings, and you’re set. And don’t forget the rotisserie chicken. God (and grocery marketing gurus) created rotisserie chicken for a reason. Use it. Add a bagged salad and a box of rice, and dinner’s done.
Now that you have some tools in your pocket, spend a little time thinking ahead so that you can plan your family’s meals two, three or even five nights in advance. So, here’s to a little variety in your weekly meals. After all variety is the spice of life right? Enjoy your family, enjoy your meals and most of all, enjoy yourself.
Jenny McCalip is a professionally trained chef who happily lives with her daughter and husband in Oakwood, OH. She is currently working to fulfill her dreams of instilling her love of food and cooking in other women.
The Parent’s Toolshop
Category: UncategorizedEver wish children came with instructions?
Now they do!
This 1999 and 2000 winner of "The National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval" and 2001 Publisher’s Marketing Association top-three finalist for the "Bill Fisher Award," for the Best First Book by a New Publisher is teeming with the best of the best – more than 100 highly practical parenting skills in an easy-to-use format.
This one-stop resource saves you time, money and frustration
No longer do you need to spend hours reading dozens of resources to find the skills and solutions you seek. This author has done the research for you! She spent over ten years researching hundreds of resources to put the best parenting advice at your fingertips. There are new ideas you’ve never heard and techniques that have worked for generations. Gone is the inaccurate, unhelpful, confusing and contradictory advice that detours your progress. Seven years of field testing by thousands of parents from all walks of life and family-service professionals resulted in statistically significant improvements in parenting skills. From toddlers to teens and beyond – these are solutions that work, every day, at home, at day care and in the classroom – and they will work for you, too!
Jody Johnston Pawel
Category: Uncategorized
Jody Johnston Pawel is a Licensed Social Worker, Certified Family Life Educator, second-generation parent educator, founder of The Family Network, and President of Parents Toolshop Consulting. She is the author of 100+ parent education resources, including her award-winning book, The Parent’s Toolshop. For 25+ years, Jody has trained parents and family professionals through her dynamic workshops and interviews with the media worldwide, including Parents and Working Mother magazines, and the Ident-a-Kid television series. Jody currently serves as the online parenting expert for Cox Ohio Publishing’s mom-to-mom websites and also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Effective Parenting Initiative.
Chic Grandma -What’s in my bag?
Category: yourchicself
Hmmm . . . all of a sudden I’ve become a “Chic Grandma.” I’m not really sure I was ever a “Chic Mom”! But here I am, the mother of seven grown kids and two step-kids and the grandmother of 10 grandkids, with more to come, feeling pretty chic. They all grew up in the blink of an eye, it seems. Yes, young mothers, one day you will look back at this time with one child in your arms, one in your lap and two squabbling at your feet and think they were the best days of your life. (I didn’t believe it either, but it’s true.)
What defines a “chic grandma” anyway? It’s not your momma’s grandma with the tight gray bun, glasses on her nose and cookies in the oven. I’m only (!) 55 and have been a grandma for eight years. L’Oreal takes care of the gray hair and my glasses are no-line bifocals, but I do love to bake. Let’s see—how about a look in my pocketbook and sees what a chic grandma carries around each day as baggage?
There is the bulging wallet I have had for years. Unfortunately, it’s not bulging with money, but receipts, because this grandma uses plastic to pay for everything so she can have flight miles to go visit the grandchildren 2,000 miles away. One thing the wallet doesn’t have is an AARP membership card because I’ve held out joining that robust group. It’s coming, though. I, a Chic Grandma, must be stubborn, yet ultimately realistic.
A new pair of socks still hangs out in the black hole of my pocketbook, leftover from an outdoor concert in Northern Virginia. It was the weekend we visited my son and his wife and toured D.C. during the day under Tropical Storm Hannah’s wrath but watched Les Mis under a beautiful starlit night. It is apparent I am interested in history, flexible during torrential rains and highly cultured, even if I wore men’s tube socks during the concert.
Then, I can’t forget my little bottle of eye drops I can’t go anywhere without because grandmas like me, even those without AARP membership, are still susceptible to such middle-age maladies as dry-eye syndrome. Then, at the bottom of the bottomless purse pit reside several kinds of migraine medicines from the over-the-counter generic pills to the $13 pills (and that’s after insurance and a coupon for $50—Yes, I am aware of the health care crisis in the U.S.). The migraines have been my albatross for the last 30 years. Supposedly, migraines get better after menopause, but I have learned that those kinds of claims are sometimes just that. Very perceptive I also am.
Electronically, this Chic Grandma is trying, but is still lagging behind her kids. My pocketbook usually holds two cell phones—work and personal—but texting is something new. My text messages tend to look like “What time will you be getting here? How do I text apostrophes?” My children are patient with me, although I wonder if, even though they urged me to get texting, they are really glad I can now reach them anywhere and everywhere. They do tease me because I refuse, I refuse to use the texting shorthand and my commas are still perfect, even if it takes me ten minutes to write one text. By the time I send one and put it down, they have texted me back.
Oh, and then there is my iPod my husband gave me but which I haven’t listened to in forever because that whole downloading music thing frustrates me a little. The robotic vacuum I got this past birthday was more along my lines. Music is wonderful—remember, I went to Les Mis—but something that cleans up the cat hair with minimal effort on my part is extraordinary.
Then there are miscellaneous items: A Happy Meal Star Wars toy to thrill a grandson and avoid another meltdown in a public place. Two checkbooks with all the checks used up. Various pens and lipsticks—neither of which a writer can do without. A little tube of toothpaste I don’t even remember putting in there. Two packets of granola unused from a yogurt parfait. A plum tart recipe from Southern Living scribbled in the doctor’s office. Etc., Etc.
Something you will not find, however, are any pictures of grandchildren, which seems sort of odd for a grandmother. But wait, I no longer carry around little photo albums of outdated photos. Instead I log in to my kid’s blogspots, or plug in my flash drive or click on my digital photo frame.
The last thing you will find in my pocketbook is the ace bandage that was wrapped around my 76-year-old mother’s bandaged hand after her carpal tunnel surgery the other day. That’s a pretty commonplace surgery, but . . . She had to have the surgery because she had played too many Gameboy games and damaged the nerves in her hand. She was upset because the surgery kept her from her two jobs she holds down for extra spending money and socialization.
Now that’s what I call a Chic Grandma!
Susan Elzey is a freelance writer based in Danville, Virginia when she isn’t madly texting her children or waiting for American Idol to start again.
