My Philosophy On Cooking

Inspired by A Classic Housewife (a blog which I'm shamefully late in discovering), I thought I'd share with you my own philosophy on cooking. The disclaimer? This is the standard I aim for, but I'm not perfect!

Good old-fashioned family meals.

I've been known to bust a move in the kitchen on occasion, trying out weird and wonderful concoctions that I've come across online or in magazines. Most times, they fail. Not always because I mucked up the recipe - although that happens too! - but in the taste test. If my family won't eat it, it's a waste of my time. Now I stick mostly to tried-and-true family favourites and modify for different flavours. I no longer care that we eat the same thing usually twice, sometimes three times a month.

If I can't find all the ingredients at the local supermarket, the recipe doesn't get made.

This doesn't mean I only ever shop at the supermarket - far from it. I oftentimes go to a stand-alone butcher and fruit and veg shop. But if my local supermarket doesn't think it's worth stocking (we're not talking specific brands here, as plenty of supermarkets are selective on those, but whole *types* of foods), then odds are the recipe will wind up too expensive or too time consuming to make anyway once I go out of my way to find an odd ingredient. Specialty asian sauces and other ethnic foods tend to fall into this category (my mother-in-law once had me looking in asian groceries down here for tamarind juice - perfect example). Thankfully most supermarkets in my area stock a fairly decent range of brands/types of foods, which allows for plenty of creativity.

My kids are never going to be gourmets, and neither am I.

At least not at the ages they are now (10 ½, 9 and 7 ½)! They're kids, and they eat like kids. They don't 'do' fancy well. They also like the same things over and over - and dislike the same things over and over. There is little practical sense in having a box stuffed full of complicated recipes if nobody likes them (that said, they are required to try all new foods a few times before pronouncing judgment)

I have a '30 Meals' list.

Menu planning, for me, comes and goes in seasons. A long stretch of an abnormal interest in freezer cooking one time, perhaps a menu based around Talented Hubby's shiftwork another, and my personal favourite, the "If It's Monday, It's Spaghetti" approach, also features prominently. My 'ebb and flow' food patterns used to bother me, but not anymore. It's part of my eclectic nature, LOL. At the very least though, I keep a running list of thirty meals that, ideally, we have the ingredients on hand to make most of the time. Things like spaghetti, lasagna, pasta bake, basic stirfry ingredients (plus rice and noodles). Sometimes, I go 'off grid' completely and each day is a new culinary disaster adventure, other times I'm very anal retentive, down to the particular side dish to serve, and that's okay. That's just Lizzie. But the '30 Meals' list gives me a fall-back plan during the bad weeks, and is a great memory jogger for weeks when I want to get a little more detailed (great explanations of a '30 Meals List' can be found at The Happy Housewife and Want What You Have). I'm also training myself to channel my culinary creativity into baking, rather than straight-out cooking of meals. It's far more appreciated there!

I try to keep a well-stocked pantry.

Just the other day, I stumbled across a spectacular deal for our favourite brand of pasta sauce. I bought sixteen jars, or enough (give or take) for four months. Another grocery trip might see me with thirty cans of tomatoes, or ten packets of pasta. If it stores well, the price is right and if it is a product we know we will need and use, then I will clean the shelves.

I am absolutely enamoured with the idea of a Price Book.

I've played around with various binder-style versions but at the moment I'm developing a spreadsheet version just like this one (plus follow up here). Price books are the dynamo of kitchen management, as far as I'm concerned. They save you loads of money and help keep your pantry filled with good food. Win!

Nutrition is important...

I'm not against 'hiding' vegetables in sauces and baked goods (a la "Deceptively Delicious"), but I do think kids need to see fruit and vegetables in their natural state and learn to enjoy them that way first. Same goes for meat, dairy and grains. The kids know processed meat should be limited, and they drink water first, milk second most of the time (with the amount of cheese they eat, I don't think lack of calcium is going to be a problem anytime soon!) Grainy bread is common in our house and they've never balked at eating it. I don't bother with adding pureed carrots to our muffins because they all know, like, and prefer raw carrot sticks.

But we're not Food Nazis.

Yes, our children eat McDonald's. Yes, they drink fizzy drinks on occasion. No, I'm not worried about the Cheetos at Little Johnny's birthday party. Sometimes - shhh! - we even let them leave food on their plates! If these occasions are limited - and they are - then we're all good.

Dessert is NOT held as a reward.

Truth be told, we rarely bother with a pre-planned dessert, and on nights that we do serve it up, 'dessert' could be anything from snacks during a movie down to a lonely cookie. Totally informal, totally random. They still try the whole 'Is there dessert tonight?' business to gauge how important eating their meal is (we do impose an 'eat most of your dinner' rule on dessert nights) but Mum and Dad are pretty smart individuals. We know when we're being scammed, LOL.

We don't force a genuinely-disliked food on the kids.

Remember this? That said, it has to be a proper aversion, not a 'pull the wool over Mama's eyes' kind of moment. Thankfully none of them have yet developed a distaste for 'real' food like milk, eggs, cheese, vegies or meat.

Snacks are generally 'smorgasbord' style.

And sometimes, when Daddy is working, so are dinners or lunches! I've never had as much success with getting the kids to try new foods as I have when I've served a few morsels up on a platter along with some other good stuff. Similar to the concept of Muffin Tin Monday (but without the tin to clean afterward!), "Kids Bits" changes every time we serve it and it's a great way to try new vegetables or use up the last couple of pieces of something - just cut them up in small pieces, add something to dip (we like cottage cheese and salsa), add some fruit, and you're good to go.

I try to bake consistently.

Commercial snack food is horrendously expensive on a per-serving basis. Not to mention filled with ingredients which are bad for us. I tried a weekly baking day but several hours standing upright in the kitchen does not a happy cook make, so I've recently switched to two co-existing systems. The first is a daily baking window. Right after lunch (and remember, my kids are in school during the day) I try to whip something up. This serves as both part of their afternoon snack (coupled with fruit or yoghurt) and the next day's lunchbox treat. Remainders get frozen.

The other thing I've been trialing this week is homemade baking mixes. One day I'll have to cost these out, but so far Anzac Biscuits and Fudge Brownies have worked brilliantly. If you want to try this, do a trial batch first - recipes would normally ask you to combine ingredients in a specific order and depending on the recipe, doing 'dry then wet' could either spell disaster or be a rioting success. A cake is a good example - normally you are asked to cream the fat (margarine or butter) together with the sugar, add the eggs and liquid flavourings, and then add the dry ingredients. Obviously you can't do that when making your own homemade mixes, so try going 'off radar' and dumping all the dry ingredients (for just one batch) in the baggie and experimenting with how they combine with the wet stuff later. Worse case scenario? The cake doesn't turn out well. If that happens, do what my Dad always suggested (it came from his mother, my Nana - queen of WWII type cooking) - break it into pieces and make a trifle out of it. That way, it's never a flop, just 're-purposed', LOL.

And there you have it. Pretty basic stuff, but it serves us well!