There is nothing my kids love more than coming home from
college to a house that smells of home cooking.
If they had it their way, I would be chained to the stove all summer,
creating just-in-time menus of all their favorite dishes. Of course, my daughter is vegan and my son’s
palette runs toward bacon-double-cheeseburgers, cheese omelets, and medium-rare
rib eye steaks. Somewhere in the middle,
my husband and I try to maintain a healthy, age-appropriate, balanced diet.
Out of practicality and self-defense, I have adopted a few
tricks along the way that keep me from becoming a culinary slave to a household
of insatiable athletes. The food in our
house must be plentiful and satisfying to keep the monsters, and their rotating
cast of friends, at bay.
Like most mothers, I was quick to tire of whining children. “Mom, can I have a snack?” When my kids were young, I dedicated one of
my deep kitchen drawers to snackage. This
is not the same as stocking your pantry with snacks. Once given access, a creative mind might
discover an urge to nosh on a bag of chocolate chips. Limiting their focus to a special drawer
keeps them out of the strategic stores of my kitchen. The snack drawer is filled exclusively with
kid-friendly snacks, all of which are “authorized” to be consumed at any time
of day without asking permission. When
they were young it contained juice boxes, fruit-leather snacks, small boxes of
cereal, cups of apple sauce and non-refrigerated pudding, and individual bags
of crackers. Today, I have upgraded to
more adult-friendly snacks, like Kashi granola bars, roasted almonds, rice
cakes, whole-grain chips, and (when my son is home) oreos. The drawer draws them in like flies. Add there is an added benefit. This strategy also prevents “open refrigerator
door lingering” and “raiding tonight’s dinner before dinner time.”
I invest one day a month for the creation of homemade granola. I make several batches at once and fill a
giant clear-glass lidded cookie jar with it (with refills safely tucked away in
an airtight container). This is kept in full view on the kitchen counter—its
little scoop an invitation to hungry snackers.
More times than not, a ravenous husband or teenager will venture no
farther than this tasty concoction. And
because I control what it contains, I know this is healthy fare.
Whether or not the kids are home from school, my routine is
pretty much the same. I use my Sundays
for grocery shopping and preparing food, planning carefully in order to avoid
spending more than 30 minutes (OK, maybe 45) in the kitchen on any other day of
the week. The key to this is soups and
stews. I like to make an enormous pot of
something once a week, freezing half the pot while using the remainder to round
out 2 or 3 meals during the week. The
choice varies. If I have a bunch of
celery, carrots, and herbs rotting in the veggie drawer, I might be drawn to
minestrone or lentil. If canned beans
are on sale, I might make an easy slow-cooker batch of tortilla soup. A pot of chili will warm an arctic blast one
night, then make a nice taco salad a few days later. And with soup always on hand, a fancy
sandwich grilled on a Panini press (my favorite is fresh mozzarella, roasted
red peppers, and a schmear of pesto) makes a wonderful and light mid-week meal.
Ah, pesto—another one of my make ahead tricks! In early August, when the basil at the local
farm store is at its peak, I make tons and tons of pesto. I substitute walnuts—toasted in the oven—for
the more traditional pine nuts because I find that they last longer, taste
great, and are half the price. Then, I
fill ice trays with the prepared pesto and freeze them. Once set, I pop out the pesto cubes and throw
them in a Ziploc freezer bag to enjoy all year round. I will defrost a cube to add to my fresh
minestrone soup, or a pot of spaghetti sauce, or to stir into a bean salad for
an extra pop of flavor. Or, I can use it
to make a quick pasta salad when I need something to bring to a potluck. I also use it frequently as a condiment in
lieu of mayonnaise on turkey or roast beef sandwiches.
Like the soups, I also make a variety of salads that can
withstand a week in the refrigerator, making light work out of daily food
preparation. Potato salad, Asian cole
slaw, pepper-artichoke-bean salad, penne-asparagus salad, Turkish salad,
cranberry-walnut-wheat berry salad, and Israeli cous-cous with roasted
vegetables are all common staples in my refrigerator. I make one or two each week; when paired with
some soup and a piece of grilled fish or chicken, it makes a quick and easy
dinner.
During my kids’ middle and high school years, the demands of
their sports kept them coming and going at different times. It was tempting to give in to Hot Pockets,
“Cup-O-Salt,” Easy-Mac, and other 90 second microwave miracles when a kid
needed to eat on the run. I hated the
direction convenience foods were going, packing more sodium and artificial
flavor into highly processed faux meals that gave young bodies nothing to work
on. Instead, I created my own microwave
meals. The most successful of these was my
mac-n-cheese cupcakes. I make good
homemade macaroni and cheese (my kids never knew I was using fortified
whole-grain pasta) and pack it into the cups of a large-size muffin tin. After baking in these small portions, I cool
them and wrap them individually in plastic wrap, then pile them into a large
Ziploc freezer bag. This way, my kids
still have the convenience of a 90-second microwave meal, but I know they are
eating something homemade. (To reheat,
put them in a bowl and sprinkle with 1-2 tablespoons of water before
microwaving.)
I truly enjoy cooking.
By all appearances, my family enjoys eating what I cook. It is flattering, but it is also a
double-edged sword. A high standard is hard to maintain day in and day out. There is nothing I enjoy more than
planning big meals and filling my home with wonderful friends and wonderful
aromas. But for me, there is a thin line
between indulging in a pleasure-filled activity and tolerating a dreaded
chore. When I entertain with food it is
enjoyable. When hungry animals
demand to be fed on schedule, taking it all for granted, I bristle. Plato once said: “Necessity, who is the
mother of invention.” In our house, it
is Mother who is the necessity of
invention. Without my little tricks and
short cuts in the kitchen, I could never have survived.
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