Recipe News: Cook 3 hours, and then eat well all week

"Does the post-workday conversation with your spouse, partner or kids ever go something like this?

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"What's for dinner?" he or she asks.

"I don't know. What are you making?" you reply. Another great start to a relaxing evening at home has begun.

Even many people who love to cook dread weeknight dinners. In addition to the pressure of feeling as if you must put a respectable meal on the table for your family, there's the added time pressure of doing it before everyone scatters to their respective activities, and the fact that, frankly, all you feel like doing is flopping on the couch and staring at the ceiling. And that's if you already have groceries in the house and a recipe in mind.

So it was with great thankfulness, bordering on tear-filled joy, that I recently discovered a simple, straightforward plan that will, with one three-hour stint in the kitchen a week, plus a few minutes of prep time after work on weeknights, provide you not only with a Norman Rockwell-caliber Sunday dinner, but also dinners and several lunches for most of the rest of the week.

The plan comes in the form of a slim, unassuming book called "Cook Once a Week, Eat Well Every Day," by Toronto-based home cooking-coaching expert Theresa Albert. The book (Marlowe & Co.; $15.95; available through local booksellers or Amazon.com) includes 13 weeks' worth of menus, a work schedule, recipes and an easy-to-photocopy shopping list for that week's ingredients. (Beginning today, we're featuring these meal plans and others like them in On the Go each month.)

By using the meal plans and shopping lists, you buy only what you really need at the grocery store, with an expected cost of about $85 a week for a family of four. You don't have to pore over all your cookbooks and come up with menus of your own, and then distill the recipes into a shopping list -- you just go through the pantry and fridge to see what you have on hand, cross that off the list, and get the remaining items at the grocery. If you do it the morning of the day you'll be cooking, you don't even have to put away those groceries."

Full article here.

September 18, 2006

Recipe News: Cook 3 hours, and then eat well all week