The Food You Want to Eat

What if I told you that all you needed to cook a good meal is some food, a heating source, and a pot to cook the food in?

I know, it probably sounds like I’m over-simplifying cooking on an extreme level, but hear me out. Most cooking, when you really think about it, boils down to three components: the food you want to eat, what you want to cook it in, and how you want to cook it.

I was going to talk about this in one long post, but the more I started writing the longer the post got. Therefore, this will be a 2 part post — this part about the food and the next part about how to cook it.

• Obviously, food is all up to personal preference.
• Are you craving something simple and healthy, like a salad?
• Do you want something warm and comforting, like a soup, stew or casserole?
• Or do you just want to get something on the table as quickly as possible because your kids are so hangry that they’re already at each other’s throats?
  
  I would suggest picking (at least) one ingredient from each of the three categories below:

The Stars

Most simple main dishes focus on one main ingredient — for now, let’s call that “the star”. This is why you’ll often hear of some recipes as a “chicken dish” or a “ground beef recipe”. The vast majority of ‘stars’ in American meals are animal proteins: chicken, beef, pork, fish, etc. etc. However, your star doesn’t have to be a meat. Beans are an excellent star to build a meal around, as are other vegetarian forms of protein like tofu. Some chefs build full meals around vegetables like eggplant, mushrooms or butternut squash. You can even make an amazing soup primarily out of onions if you handle them correctly (French Onion soup).

Does that mean that you need to know how to cut up a whole chicken or filet a fish (cut up a fish into it’s most edible components, kind of like cutting up a chicken but with a fish) in order to cook? Absolutely not! Think of big cuts of meat, dried beans or whole vegetables as “high maintenance” stars. Can you work with them? Sure, but they’re going to need a lot of help to get to a state where you’ll be happy with their performance.

“Low maintenance” stars, on the other hand, are ingredients that work and play well with others and help their director (you) to put a better meal together very quickly. Some of them don’t even need to be cooked.

Here are some of my favorite “low maintenance” stars:

• Canned beans
• Eggs
• Canned chicken
• Smoked sausages (especially if you can find it pre-sliced or in a smaller form like Hillshire Farms Lil’ Smokies)
• Shrimp (raw works fine, but I tend to buy pre-cooked)
• Frozen meatballs
• ham steaks, diced ham, minced ham…(ham options are pretty much endless)
• pre-cooked frozen chicken or turkey pieces (Chicken nuggets count! Check out this recipe for a fancy chicken dish that uses chicken nuggets as the “star” ingredient.)

Hopefully by now you get the idea. When time is tight or energy is low, you need to get ‘helping hands’ wherever you can. One of the best ways to do that is to build your grocery list around ‘whole foods’ that have been pre-prepped in a way that allows you to save a couple of steps in the cooking process. Let’s move on to…

The Supporting Cast

While some “stars” can go it alone, most work best when they’re working alongside other people. Same thing goes for cooking. Could you eat a steak by itself and call it dinner? Sure, but most people wouldn’t find that to be very satisfying. A simple meal could have as few as one or two supporting components (think “steak and potatoes”) while a soup to feed a crowd or a complicated italian dish like a lasagna could have what feels like a supporting “cast of thousands”.

The simplest supporting cast members are what some people will call carbs: starchy foods that consist primarily of carbohydrates. Adding these to your meal will bring additional nutrients and will generally bring greater satisfaction to your finished product.

Most fruits and vegetables also qualify as excellent supporting cast members for your meal. Some of them are easily edible in their ‘whole’ form or need minimal effort to be eaten with your meal. However…there are also tons of quality “low maintenance” supporting cast members out there. You do not need to be limited to what can be eaten whole — or need extra prep help from you.

Some of my favorite “low maintenance” supporting cast include:

• Breads of all kinds
• Potatoes (smaller the better if you want to buy fresh, but there are tons of frozen options that are incredibly easy to work with)
• Pre-cooked rice or pasta — no, you don’t have cook these things yourself anymore! There are all sorts of varieties of pasta, rice and other grains that are pre-cooked and vacuum sealed for your convenience. (Yes, you will pay a little bit more for this convenience.)
• Quick-cooking rice and pasta mixes (Yes, I’m talking about Rice-a-Roni and/or boxed macaroni and cheese. I wouldn’t base your diet entirely on these things, but they’re really helpful in a pinch. Plus, some of them are really inexpensive.)
• Couscous, bulgur and other quick-cooking grains — some grains, believe it or not, only need to be soaked in boiling water to be perfectly edible. For me, these are an absolute staple. They can be bought plain (usually in bulk) or flavored in mixes from companies like Near East.
• Short pastas — Short pastas are defined by their length: macaroni, orzo, ditalini, pastina, etc. They are small dried pasta shapes — and when it comes to one-pot meals, the shorter (and thinner) the pasta, the better. Elbow macaroni is a great one to start with — as is orzo, which looks like an oversized grain of rice.
  Dried pastas aren’t always as hard to work with as you think. More on this in part 3, but for now just know that if all you can find to work with is a box of macaroni…we can make that work in one pot, I promise!
• Frozen vegetables — a starch, a bag of frozen vegetables and the protein of your choice pretty much qualifies as a complete meal that can be super easy to throw together (and yes, you can find a recipe for that here). Explore and find the varieties that work for you and your family.
• Fresh pre-chopped vegetables — these are obnoxiously expensive, given that the easiest place to find these in decent quantity is your average self-serve salad bar. However, in a pinch…it can be a great way to pay to reduce your level of cooking stress. If money is tight, though, and there are frozen or canned options available…take them.

The Extras

If you heat up a plain can of beans, then throw in an unseasoned variety of couscous and a box of plain frozen vegetables — will it fill you up? Sure. But will it be incredibly boring to eat? Absolutely!

Your meal, like any good “production”, is going to be greatly improved with the addition of some extras: ingredients that bring flavor to your dish and could (potentially) even enhance the flavor of your star and supporting ingredients.

One ingredient, in particular, is the most legendary ‘actor’ ever to grace this category:

Salt: Every once in a while, you will hear some obnoxiously negative news report about how bad salt is in our diet — and how much of it we consume anyway. There is one VERY simple rule to remember when it comes to salt: if you’re adding it yourself, it’s okay! As a general rule, the food that you get when you eat out and just about all pre-packaged, pre-prepared food that you find in the supermarket will have far more salt than you could ever add when you add salt to a dish on your own. Limit the salt in any of your pre-packaged foods whenever you can and add salt as you cook (if you feel it’s necessary). Do this and your cardiologist is unlikely to have any complaints!

Other “extras” that will do your shopping list a ton of favors:

• Spices and spice mixes (Remember, limit the salt that comes from the package and add your own as you cook!) This includes seasoning mix packets like taco seasoning, chili powder and gravy mixes.
• Frozen diced onion and/or peppers A lot of people will tell you that it’s not worth buying these as they’re “not as flavorful” as chopping the onion yourself. Unless you’re making French Onion soup (in which case, you’re probably not reading this anyway), you probably won’t taste the onion in your dish regardless of whether it started the day as fresh or frozen (or powdered, for that matter). This is a cheap vegetable that can stretch your dollar and boost the flavor of your food. Add to cart.
• Minced garlic, ginger and other herb pastes Buy these in a tube instead of a jar if you can find them — a tube exposes less of the paste to the air, which means the flavor will last a lot longer. I would also throw pesto in this category — unless you’re allergic to pine nuts. Pesto is a multi-herb paste that can give any dish a powerful punch of flavor very, very quickly.
• Canned tomatoes, peppers, pickles, etc. — these can pack a ton of flavor. Canned tomatoes have even been found to be more nutritious than their fresh cousins. Keep an eye on the salt content and buy reduced sodium if you can find it.
• Sauces and other condiments — freshly made will always taste better if you’re willing to swing it, but it can be a ton of work. As long as you treat them as an extra and not a star you they are great to have in your pantry.
• Alcohol Wine, brandy, vodka, etc. will do a lot to punch up the flavor of any dish. It cooks off to negligible amounts under the average amount of cooking heat found in most recipes. However, some people might still be sensitive to it (for whatever reason). Fruit juices and/or vinegars can be substituted for many alcohols if it’s a concern — ask Google/Chat GPT for substitution ideas for your particular recipe if necessary.

Meal Planning aka Your Shopping List

So — after reading through this post, hopefully you’re starting to get a little less intimidated by the prospect of cooking and a little more excited about it. But before you can choose your pot and start cooking, we should probably talk about “meal planning”.

Meal planning, to put it simply, is deciding what you want to eat and when you want to eat it. This can be done as far as a week in advance and as short notice as ten minutes before you want to sit down to a meal.

Could you plan further than a week in advance? Sure — but you will need to be careful how far in advance you buy things like fresh produce (because you won’t want most things to sit in your refrigerator for more than a week). So until you’re a more experienced cook who is comfortable cooking for yourself on a regular basis…I wouldn’t try to plan more than a week ahead.

How to meal plan:

1. I know it will probably sound counter-intuitive, but you do not start meal planning by figuring out what you’re in the mood to eat. If you just start flipping through Pinterest and watching TikToks until you’re absolutely starving and then you head out to the grocery store — that’s a recipe for disaster. You will probably…

• end up buying duplicates of things that you already have in the house
• end up impulse buying junk foods
• and you will defintely end up spending more than you want to spend and wasting food!

2. So — your meal plan should start by shopping your freezer and pantry. (Chances are pretty good that if there’s anything in your fridge, it’s not something you’re going to want to use in your meal plan anyway. But if you do have fresh food in your fridge that’s still of decent quality…) Make a list. If you can, I would recommend separating your list into the 3 columns (stars, support, and extras). Your list should be anything you already have in the house that fits into those three categories we described above. If you have stuff in your fridge, write those items down first. (You’ll probably need to eat through those fridge items fairly quickly.)
3. Take a hard look at your list. How many meals can you make out of what you already have on hand? If you have a week’s worth of stars in your fridge, freezer and pantry already, then congratulations! You might not even need to worry about going to the store!
4. Write the day of the week next to each item that you need to use up OR start a separate page with each day of the week where you want to cook. Add each of your already owned ingredients to the day you want to cook with it. (You don’t have to commit to cooking that particular food on that particular day. You’re just trying to have seven meals worth of stuff on hand.)
5. Now take a look at your meal plan for the week. If you think, “I wish I had ________ to add to that meal…” that is the start of your shopping list. Write down any of the items that pop into your mind.
6. Now you’re going to prep to go shopping. Go to the website for your local grocery store. Ideally you will be able to shop online — but at the very least you should be able to flip through an electronic version of this week’s circular.
   • If you can shop online:
     • Add the things on your shopping list to your online shopping cart. Just a straight transfer (for now).
     • Look at your cart.
       • Are you comfortable with the total that you will be paying?
       • Are there items where you are SUPER brand loyal, or could you save a buck by switching brands?
       • Should you stick to your meal plan, or would it work to change up your meal idea because something else is on a really good sale?
       • Is there anything else that you’re missing and that you need to add to your cart?
     • Schedule your order for curbside pickup. In most situations you won’t pay any additional fees for this. (There are fees for delivery and occasionally fees for setting up a pickup order of less than $25, but if you’re grocery shopping for a week chances are pretty good that you’ll exceed that minimum. Easily.)
     • If there are items on your list that would cause you problems if they are not included in your order, then make sure that you specify what item your shopper should substitute for that item or if they should just skip it and take the item off your list). Every shopping platform has a system for this — but that system will default to your “shopper’s discretion” if something is out of stock. If that bothers you, this is the time to leave instructions for what you prefer.
       • (NOTE: The exception to this is warehouse clubs like Sam’s Club. If an item you want is out of stock, they will automatically refund your money and not look for a replacement item. Plan accordingly.)
     • Enjoy the extra time that you save from not going to the store yourself. 🙂
     • The day that you are scheduled to pick up your order from the store, your shopper will (most likely) text you if a substitution needs to be made to an item you’ve flagged as important. Keep an eye out for that text — that is the cut-off point for making changes (if necessary).
     • Pick up your groceries. This will most likely be a curbside service, but your store will give you directions about how, when and where to pick up your groceries.
   • If you can’t shop online:
     • If you can’t shop online, chances are you’re going to have to go to the store yourself.
     • Take a look at your list and highlight any items that you find in the (online) circular. Those highlighted items are on sale, which means that you might want to think about buying extras of that item (if your budget permits). Sales change weekly and most items go on sale every 6-8 weeks. If the sale looks really good and you have the budget/storage space to do so, it might be worth it to stock up.
     • If you don’t see an item in the circular, that means that item is not on sale and you will have to pay full price for that item. Consider changing up your meal plan to “shop the sales” if you want to save a little extra money.
     • If you have other things that you need to add to your shopping list, now is the time to do it.
     • Once you’re happy with what you have on your shopping list, then it’s time to go to the store.
       A few tips:
       • Go to the store mid-morning or in the early afternoon if you can. You’ll want to avoid “rush hours” if possible to make the whole process less stressful.
       • Don’t go hungry; it will tempt you to pick up impulse purchases that aren’t on your list.
       • If at all possible, try to go alone. You will also minimize the temptation to impulse buy if you aren’t being distracted by kids and/or spouses who are less determined to stick to your shopping list.
       • I hope it goes without saying at this point, but stick to your list.

Okay, now — whether you spent an hour or two at the grocery store or picked up your pre-packed groceries after placing an online order — you now have a stocked fridge, freezer and pantry with a plan to cook for your family for the next (probably) week.

You’re probably wondering how to cook all of this food that you just bought.

That’s part 2.