Inspired by The Clothes Make The Girl, I started doing a weekly cook-up where I just do two hours of hardcore cookery. I plan out some meals that can be prepared ahead of time and reheated, and some meals that can be cooked quickly with ingredients around the house. This will save both Paul and I at least three hours during the week, since dinner prep time is cut from 45 minutes to 15, and lunches are easily packed out of the leftovers. And now that we’re cutting Ben’s grain intake, I’m also preparing more baked goods, things like grain-free banana bread, grain-free tortillas, etc.
Here’s what’s in our fridge today. This doesn’t include the pre-cooked leftover chicken breasts for my lunch salads, nor the fruit we pack for snacks, nor does it include the few packaged foods we eat (organic hot dogs for Ben’s lunch, yogurt for Paul’s breakfast, etc). But it should be enough to keep this family of three going until we have time to shop again this weekend.
Entrees:
Shrimp & Fish Tacos
Cowboy Chili with Squash
Soups
“Garbage soup” (leftover kale, turnips, sweet potato, ground beef)
Baked goods:
Veggies for Cooking:
Cut up broccoli
Cauliflower
Raw veggies for salads:
Red Lettuce
Purple Cabbage
Broccoli/cabbage/carrot slaw mix
Celery
Condiments & sauces
Paleo Mayo* (made last week)
So how does all this get done in one night? It gets done in an intricate ballet of cooking. I put on some music (in this case, Darkwave, the weekly classic goth show on First Wave on Sirius) and then just go for it. I broke down all the prep work and actions for timing so I could multi-task everything smoothly:
The Weekly Cookup Action Item List!
1) Mix banana bread & bake
2) Put shrimp & fish in fridge for defrosting
3) Sear the stew meat for the chili
4) Cut up 5 onions (1 for chili, 1 for zucchini soup; 1 for garbage soup; 2 for meatball sauce)
5) Crush 1 head of garlic
6) Start the onion and garlic cooking for chili
7) Put stew meat, onion, garlic, 500mL broth and 1 can tomatoes in slow cooker
8) Start soup pot with oil, onion, garlic
9) Add spices; cut up & add zucchini
10) Start peeling & cutting up vegetables for garbage soup (celery, carrots, turnips, kale, sweet potato)
11) Add chicken broth to zucchini soup; move to small pot
12) Start garbage soup in big soup pot with onion & garlic
13) Add celery to soup pot; finish peeling & cutting up remaining vegetables
14) Add remaining vegetables & leftover ground beef to soup pot with 1L broth
15) Mix plantain tortillas & start in oven
16) Start Moroccan meatball sauce in large skillet
17) Mix Moroccan meatballs; place in sauce
18) Put in 2nd batch tortillas
19) Peel & Cut up butternut squash & add to chili pot
20) Finish cooking tortillas; set aside to cool
21) Simmer meatballs until done
22) Package and label everything!
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