Having, eating.

[mrissa]

On Saturday, we introduced my folks and Grandma to dim sum, which was a good thing not only in that we all enjoyed it, but also in that we ate mountains of dim sum for lunch and did not have to come up with much for supper. Which is good, because on Saturday everything I cook had gone completely out of my head. It wasn't that I had forgotten how to cook. It's that I'd forgotten what to cook. I got it back yesterday morning with only minor deliberate effort, but enough of my friends have complained recently about having to come up with what to cook that I thought I would mention what I do sometimes, with an addition you could do if this is a constant problem.

Me, I put meals on a PostIt on the fridge. Right now it says:
lamb stew
plum scallops
potato hotdish
pasta bake
potpie
tacos
Span rice
Swed meatballs

and so on. I write the stuff down, and for me this is enough: we can make decisions on the individual nights based on which of those things we feel like, or which of those things has ingredients that will go bad if not used soon, or etc. Last night we picked the lamb stew because markgritter did not have an opinion, and timprov and I wanted something that would go well with a side dish of roasted yams, and also timprov will be eating at his desk a lot this week (this is very atypical), so we wanted to have one of the sloppier things on a night he would be eating at the table with us. Tonight we will have the scallops because scallops are better fresher, and we will have asparagus with them because it's cold and the oven will be free, and we will have quinoa because it goes well with both other things. After that we'll poke around the fridge and see if anything is looking dodgy or sounds particularly good. For us that tends to be enough planning.

If you have difficulty thinking of or deciding what to cook on a regular basis, and if it's a source of stress for you and yours, my first suggestion would be to write down what you know how to cook on a big master list. You can mark up the master list if you like--which things are easy, which things are fast, which things are cheap, which things involve a lot of something you'd prefer not to have often or to have more of (if, for example, you're trying to eat less sodium or more potassium or whatever), which things one member of your household or frequent visitor can't have at all or doesn't like, etc. This list may give you ideas for what you'd like to learn to make--if you notice that there are very few vegetarian meals and you'd like some, for example, or that you have nothing that looks like it would be tasty with a favorite side dish, or that you always say you're going to cook more one-pot meals but everything on your list is meat and two veg, or that you never seem to make soup, or that nothing sounds like it'd be good on a hot day.

Then from the master list you can just take things and put them in order: easy things on Thursday because you are always worn out by Thursday, or fast things on Tuesday because you have to get to a meeting Tuesday evening, or like that. Then you've made the decisions at once and written them down and all you have to do when the time comes is follow the list.

If you don't have a master list, then maybe you make friends with people like me who talk about food a lot, and when we say, "mushroom risotto," you say, "What's in that? How do you make it? Is it hard? Can I have the recipe?" Maybe if you want to play it cool you use phrases like, "I've been wanting a good recipe for that," instead.

Every once in awhile I read an article where someone is snarking about people who blog or twitter or in any other way communicate about what they're eating, and it annoys me. People talk about food. It's a very human thing. Someone says, "I got a gorgeous branch of brussels sprouts at the store," and before you know it there are half a dozen other people trading recipes for whether you want them roasted or steamed, garlic or nuts or bacon, or else just saying to themselves quietly, "Hey, brussels sprouts, I haven't had those in a long time!" or, "I didn't realize you could do that with brussels sprouts," or even, "Brussels sprouts come on a branch?" So no, I don't update my Facebook with every meal so that you hear that I had blackberries at dinner last night and then the remainder of them at lunch today. On the other hand, they were darn good blackberries, and I had an English muffin with some of porphyrin's raspberry jam, and I had some bought pecans quick before the pecans my cousin sends me from her trees get here and we are overwhelmed with fresh gift pecans. And it is not bad for me to say I enjoyed these things, and it is not bad for you to hear it. And if it is, skip along to the next entry on your friendslist without great harm done.

I am still awfully run-down, and porphyrin says I will be awhile longer probably, but I found the time and energy to make something else in the kitchen yesterday, beyond the lamb stew and yams and blackberries that were the main part of dinner. I made chocolate castle cakes in the mini-castles pan. Then I turned them out into my second-best lasagna pan, and I poured the frosting in so they would be chocolate castle cakes in a chocolate moat. And then after the frosting was cooled I put Swedish fish along the top of the moat. Rob and Lil were pretty impressed. To tell you the truth, I was kind of impressed myself. I am mostly not that good at presentation, but I got inspired over the fish in the moat.

There was extra cake batter, so I baked it in two ramekins, and I frosted them, and I stuck each one in a Ziploc in the freezer. There will come a day when the castles are gone and one of us says, "I could really go for a piece of chocolate cake," and then there they will be, ready and waiting. Do you know what this means? It means I am having my cake and eating it too. Which is a pleasant thing.

Comments

[daharyn.livejournal.com]

I am over the moon over the fish in the moat. :)

[columbina.livejournal.com]

What is a castle cake? Is it literally a cake made in a pan shaped like a castle? I suspect it is, but although I have seen big ones like that (http://www.cutleryandmore.com/details.asp?SKU=9883&src=Google&cam=NordicWare&sub=Castle+Bundt&kw=castle%20cake%20pan&gclid=CKqP_eSfwJ8CFVFM5QodaD-63g), I have never seen miniature ones.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is NordicWare, but instead of one big castle it is six little ones.

They are still not really little enough per se: you would have to like cake quite a lot to eat a whole castle yourself. But half a castle is good.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

We have a list of household jobs.

Actually, we don't, because it was on the hard drive of Caliban-that-died, but in theory we do, and I made it. After I made it, we distributed the jobs by ability and desire.

A while after that, I realised that there were some jobs that were not on the list, and they were my jobs, and they were not on the list because I hadn't defined them as jobs when I was making the list, but they are jobs just as much as sweeping the floor is a job.

One of those invisible jobs of mine is meal planning. It's connected with shopping and it's connected with cooking, but it is its own thing, and it can be quite complicated.

Your chocolate castles sound wonderful.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have been trying to give myself credit for meal planning as an invisible job, and also for being the one who sees when irregular things need doing and parcels out the doing of them. That's not nagging and therefore a bad thing, it's a job that needs doing and therefore a good thing.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The concept of separating meal planning from cooking (and somewhat from shopping) fills me with a terrible dread. Though, like anything, anything at all, I'm sure it could work fine for exactly the right specific people.

Do invisible jobs get added to the list when discovered? I suppose not in the literal sense, at least, in your case, since the actual list is now virtual or theoretical.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Plum scallops? What is that? How do you make it?

I am very interested by your meal planning idea, though almost one hundred percent certain it would not work if I tried it, because of the way I think about food.

Which is to say, I have almost never made any given dish more than once. I read a lot of cookbooks and foodblogs, and I'm always working on improving my basic technique, so generally we buy a lot of staples and I go stare at them and then say, oh, that thing I read about yesterday, and also I think three years ago I did this other thing with the oranges, and then I do that, and then if we like it three years later I may think of it again. And we buy special ingredients if I see something I'd like to try somewhere. But I do not have a repertoire. I've tried to start one, but I am too fond of the allure of new and shiny, and also too incapable of duplicating things without changing something.

Every so often my staring-at-the-fridge mojo gives out, usually when I'm sick, and everyone has to tell me what they want to eat; but they generally know.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I take scallops, and I cook them, and then I take the plum sauce porphyrin put up this summer and put a dollop on each scallop.

I realize this is not as useful to people who don't have a porphyrin. But other people make plum sauces of varying kinds.

timprov cooks like you're describing. The problem is that timprov is not always physically up for cooking, and also the allure of the new and shiny does not always strike him and dinner still needs to go on the table.

I sometimes cook like you're describing, but it's harder now that I'm not doing the grocery shopping. The best grocery shopping for our household comes when timprov and I shop together so I start saying I want to make something with that fish and that general range of spice and what goes crunch because I want something to go crunch in this and he comes up with something he wants that goes crunch and we end up with meals. But we can't rely on me being able to go grocery shopping with him.

"Pasta bake," for example, will be something we've never made in quite this form before, but it had to be thought of before markgritter went to the grocery store yesterday, because I wouldn't be there to squint at the wild mushroom agnolotti and go, "Hmm," and buy three packets.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

I'd be willing to send you a jar of plum preserves if you like.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

At several periods, the household I was living in did cooking by having the participants each in charge of a week. For that week, they had to plan and shop and produce dinner (minimum of 3 in exceptional circumstances, more strongly preferred) with some goal of having leftovers for lunch, and also picking up things people needed for the fill-in meals and the usual other stuff one often buys at the grocery store (soap, bags, etc.). (This was not an attempt to make an ungameable set of rules for enemies who lived together; this was a fairly successful attempt to set some principles to allow people living together to share around the cooking work in a way that avoided inappropriate uses of the kitchen knives on housemates.)

That's pretty much my favorite. It's *MY* refrigerator for the week, and it's not my problem the other weeks.

I'm also of the "chief cook and bottle-washer" religion, which means I'd much rather clean up after myself than after other cooks. (I do a fair amount of clean-as-you go when there are spare minutes, and do some planning and expedients to dirty less stuff).

I rather like planning a set of menus; the times I dislike it tend to be times when I'm too busy to actually do the cooking (and have to anyway). Planning leftovers, and things that get used in the next meal (ham bones in soups, leftover roast port in grill sandwiches, etc.), and stuff you have to buy in excess (carrots) makes it all an interesting problem.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh lordy yes. I clean up as I'm cooking so much better than the other people who live here, so the "one cooks and the other cleans" version for two-person households always looked like a bad deal to me.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a good suggestion, this list thing. I will do that immediately. I say "I can't cook" but the truth is I can make about 5 quite good dishes, and the rest is panicked scrabbling. Doing those 5 dishes more often would be a big help in eating better food more often, and then I could plan carefully when cooking new things.

"Potato hotdish" sounds intriguing...what is it?

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

HotDish is a religion in MN. It's served across all class/social/ethnic etc lines. Most I find to bland but there exceptions.

Anywho here's a few recipes:

Mary O’Hara’s Tater-Tot Hot Dish

6 Servings
””
1 pound lean ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 10 oz. package frozen corn, (or you can substitute canned)
1 12 oz. jar beef gravy
1 16 ounce package frozen tater tots

Brown the ground beef and onion in a large skillet; drain off any grease. Add the corn and gravy and mix well. Pour into a 2 quart shallow casserole dish. Arrange the tater tots evenly on top. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour or until the tater tots are crisp.

Amount Per Serving
Calories 214 Calories from Fat 104
Percent Total Calories From: Fat 49% Protein 31% Carb. 20%

Nutrient Amount per Serving
Total Fat 12 g
Saturated Fat 4 g
Cholesterol 53 mg
Sodium 77 mg
Total Carbohydrate 11 g
Dietary Fiber 0 g
Sugars 0 g
Protein 17 g

Vitamin A 2% Vitamin C 7% Calcium 0% Iron 10%
Minnesota Tater-Tot Hot Dish

8 Servings
””

1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 10 3/4 ounce can cream of mushroom soup
1 10 3/4 ounce can cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup milk
1 16 oz. package frozen mixed vegetables
1 16 oz. package frozen tater tots

1 1/2 cups cheddar jack cheese

Brown the ground beef with the onion; drain off any fat. Stir in the soups, milk, and the vegetables. Transfer the mixture to a 9 x 13" baking dish. Arrange the tater tots on top.

Bake in a preheated 350° oven for about 30 minutes, or until the mixture is bubbly and the tater tots are brown and crisp. Sprinkle the cheese over the tater tots, return the dish to the oven, and bake an additional 10-15 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Amount Per Serving
Calories 454 Calories from Fat 249
Percent Total Calories From: Fat 55% Protein 22% Carb. 24%

Nutrient Amount per Serving
Total Fat 28 g
Saturated Fat 13 g
Cholesterol 83 mg
Sodium 1036 mg
Total Carbohydrate 27 g
Dietary Fiber 1 g
Sugars 0 g
Protein 24 g

Vitamin A 57% Vitamin C 11% Calcium 0% Iron 15%

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Here is the theory of potato hotdish: you slice a bunch of potatoes into thin slices, and you fry them in oil until they are cooked and some of them are mildly crunchy. You can spice them with various things while you do this. Then you put them in a hotdish pan (= casserole dish for those Not From Here) with some kind of cooked meat if you eat meat, some assortment of chopped veggies to your liking, some kind of sauce if you want one, and throw cheese over the whole thing. Stick it in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes. Potato hotdish.

I will likely do this with chicken, tomatoes, mushrooms, ranch dressing, and Jack cheese. But you can do it with hamburger, peppers, tomatoes, taco sauce, and cheddar. You can do it with asparagus, artichoke hearts, red bell peppers, tomatoes, lashings of lemon juice (and I'd probably fry the potatoes in butter at that point), and some nice cheese like manchego. You can do it very easily if you are given to having Baked Meats of some sort common to American holidays--ham leftovers go in it well with peas and broccoli, for example, turkey with green beans, beef with carrots and peas if you don't want to do anything more exciting. It is not at all fancy but hearty and moderately pleasant.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I hate the snark about what people twitter. It is a worse waste of time than anything they are criticizing. I had toast for breakfast, by the way.

[pameladean]

Every time I see somebody using the by-now extremely-tired phrase about how Twitter is just people talking about what they had for breakfast, I want to go join FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendster, and who knows what-all else and tell them ALL what I had for breakfast.

The only trouble is that I'd have to have something annoying to eat -- annoying to others, that is -- and for breakfast that is too much trouble.

P.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I don't spend much time on Twitter, and maybe it's a good thing because I'm mostly not interested in hearing what people ate. (It also used to drive me nuts in real life when my parents wanted to talk about what everyone had for lunch.) What I *am* interested in is people talking *about* what they ate - anything from "I just had the freshest tomatoes ever, from the guy at the Farmer's Market who's been experimenting with heirloom breeds" to "This new restaurant served me manogoes, prosciutto and Gouda, which sounds terrible but worked amazingly well together (note: no idea if that would work - I made it up!) to "when I feel awful there is nothing better than chicken soup the way my grandmother used to make it." I also find it interesting when people talk about their cooking techniques or experiments - or meal planning techniques, as here, or nutrition planning.

Maybe it's a particular case of something I've noticed in general: people are almost always fascinating (at least for a while) when talking about something they care about. Most people don't care much when they're saying "I had a salami sandwich for lunch, you?" "I had oatmeal". If they care enough to expand on that, even if it's just enough to say "I eat salami every day because I don't have time to think about lunch. I eat with my friend and the conversation is always so absorbing that I don't really notice what I'm eating," then it gets more interesting.

[skwirly.livejournal.com]

I get more attention on Twitter for talking about what I'm cooking than I do for my witty one-liners. This is possibly because I am far better at cooking than being witty, but it is also because people like food. (PS brussels sprouts? Parmesan cream sauce. SO good.)

Also, I'm jealous of your plum sauce.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As well you should be, because the plum sauce is good stuff.

Tonight timprov and I figured out what I will do to it to make it go into plum pepper beef. (Garam masala, cinnamon, tiny bit of cloves, garlic.) And that will be a lovely thing.

[cloudscudding.livejournal.com]

I keep a spreadsheet of recipes I can make based on ingredients I usually have in the house, with all the ones in my cookbooks in them. This means I usually am making something new to me, with varied results.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I feel like I ought to use my cookbooks more, but when I do I end up "fixing" them, so maybe I shouldn't.

(One of my cookbooks bears the phrase, "OH HELL NO," in one of its margins. Mostly I am more polite than that.)

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

Mike and I try to sit down at the beginning of the week (Saturday or Sunday) and come up with meals. One quick meal the kids will like-- two meals that look good out of cookbooks or our repertoir, and at least two meals that use up something in a jar or from the freezer.

Today that all went to hell-- Robin's ophthalmologist was running over an hour late and we were still in Minnetonka at the time when I was going to make tortilla soup and quesadillas.

So the kids got frozen pizza (their choice) and Mike and I got a ground lamb/rice/tomatos/pine nuts/cheddar cheese/tahini thing that is quick in the making and good as leftovers on flour tortillas, and then-- having learnt my lesson-- I prepped for tomorrow's polenta-stuffed green peppers.

I guess if this has a point, it's that those of us not fortunate enough to have a Mrissa around need to make an extra effort to do as much meal prep as possible the night before. :) or freeze a lot of parbaked casseroles.

Or something. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Even having a mrissa around does not obviate the need for meal prep in advance. The vertigo has been a particular lesson this way. I chop vegetables when I'm feeling steady enough to do so, and then we have containers of chopped fresh veg in the fridge most of the time and if I'm a little wobbly when dinner rolls around, it's less of a problem because I'm dumping the cauliflower where it needs to go rather than trying to wrangle it off the head.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Now I want cake...I may have to make some soonish.

And people who never talk about food worry me. Food is one of the best parts of life and enjoying food one of the pleasures. Sharing that enjoyment with others is just a natural thing to do.

[talimena.livejournal.com]

I love hearing about what people are eating, probably for the same reasons I love reading cookbooks. Your list on the fridge is something I've had more success with than any more structured attempts at meal planning. I don't have a master list written out, but that might help.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I love reading about what people are making and cooking. And so I post about it- especially since i end up doing a fair amount of my meal planning as I mull over options while writing posts.

I generally have a loose plan about what meals what days, because I try to make sure I have leftovers for lunches. Some flex is good, of course!

I pretty much NEVER go shopping and plan to get what looks good. In the wiinter I'm ruled by the meat I have in the freezer (we get 15 pounds/month from a local CSA), and in the summer by that and the veg CSA stuff. And I count a lot on sales.

I especially love reading about other people's meal planning, because it's really the hardest part and I appreciate new perspectives.

[hbevert.livejournal.com]

We've got a meal planning system that coincides with the shopping list. On the fridge is a piece of paper with the meals we decided in advance we'd like to make in the right-hand column, with the shopping list for those meals on the left-hand side. The right-hand column also includes notes on what page and what book the recipe is from if we're using a cookbook. Those notes are especially helpful if the person who originally signed up to cook that meal has to bail and the other one needs to step in and make it instead.

We buy groceries usually for two weeks at a time, with most meals designated for the second week being things that are all storecupboard and freezer ingredients or with ingredients that keep a while. Ingredients that are circled after the shopping trip are perishable ingredients that will require another short trip to the store in the second week.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah. We almost never make each other's things. Mostly if the person who signed up to cook a meal has to bail, we have something else completely--sometimes leaving the ingredients intact to be used the next night by the originally planned cook, sometimes using the ingredients in something substantially different. But with a few exceptions, there are things each of us make, and they don't overlap much.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

I think the primary factor is that you are eating (and talking about) real food. If I announce that today I had McDonalds for breakfast and an Eggo with peanut butter for lunch I do not so much stimulate conversation. :)There are food conversations that are about "what I cooked" which prompt others to talk and some that are simply "what I put in my face to not die."

You will notice I almost never talk about food. I have nothing helpful to say. I *do* enjoy what you have to say about food.