You may like the idea of home-cooked meals—they’re healthier, save money and give you more time with family. But if cooking is burdensome, it’ll remain an idea that never becomes reality.
The best way to ease into regular scratch cooking is to start making it a routine, a habit. Zen Habits’ Leo Babauta suggests you set a single small goal when trying to make a healthy life change.
And you’ll give yourself the best chance for success by being prepared.
The tips below will help you plan, shop for—and even advance-cook and store—great scratch-cooked meals.
7 food prep tips that make cooking easier.
- Plan weekly menus: Brainstorm and write down dishes you plan to cook for the next week. Include any salads and side dishes that go with them. Need some ideas? See my weekly menus.
Don’t be afraid to repeat favorite foods in your weekly menu. If your kids love that simple pasta, go ahead and serve it three weeks in a row—or three days in a row, if you can stand it. I won’t tell. In fact, if you like a recipe that much, please email it to me.
Back to menus…If you, your spouse, partner or roommate share cooking duties, decide who will cook each day and write it down along with each day’s menu. At Copywriters’ Kitchen, we post the menu on the refrigerator door to spare unpleasant pre-dinner fisticuffs (“It’s your turn!” “No, it’s yours!”)I use Backpack for menu planning. A free online organizer, Backpack lets you make notes and lists. You can rearrange and delete items—or check them off your list when you’re done. Of course, use good old pen and paper if that works best for you.
- Keep a stocked pantry: In addition to buying weekly meal ingredients, a full pantry and fridge go a long way in preventing last-minute surrender to take-out and convenience foods. For pantry pointers, see my list of 30 Frugal Foodie Staples.
- Make a grocery list: Once you know what you’ll eat next week, make a complete grocery list. Be sure your list includes:
- All the ingredients you need for your menus, including odd items and spices
- Breakfast foods not on your menu
- Lunch items, if you pack this meal for yourself or your children
- Staples: Do you have flour, milk, eggs and other key items? Double check your pantry for staples before you walk out the door to shop.
With practice, you can streamline and organize your grocery list for faster, easier shopping: I shop in several markets, so I divide my list into sublists. One friend is an uber-shopper—C., you know who you are—who organizes his list according to the store’s floor plan for speedy in-out-no-impulse shopping.
Again, I love Backpack for making menus and shopping lists. I type grocery sublists on the same page with weekly menus. Backpack keeps your weekly menu and shopping list in the “cloud” accessible anytime, anywhere, online. You can re-arrange and delete items with a click and keep week-to-week basics—milk, bread, whatever—on the list until you delete them.
- Shop regularly: To make shopping less onerous, make it routine. Try to schedule it on the same day(s) every week. This isn’t as compulsively GTD as you think. Remember the old householder’s adage, “Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday…” Routine not only reinforces good habits—it’s comforting. I “batch” once-a-week shopping with a trip to dry cleaners, pharmacy and other errands.
- Hold a cook-athon: On weekends before a deadline, I often work myself into a compulsive—but satisfying—cooking frenzy, knocking out 2-3 simple meals at a shot. It pays off later in the week when I can pull out nice, home-cooked meals without touching a pot.
Cook-athons provide dual benefits: Yes, your family eats great food. But more importantly, you get a guilt reprieve. Because in addition to the inherent stress of deadlines—or product launches, or whatever your work is—you feel BAD about neglecting your kids.
When you’re pressed, it’s tempting to reach for pizza or take-out. But your family—and YOU—need healthy, delicious home-cooked food that feeds body and soul.
You feel glad to whip out yummy soups, pasta sauces or casseroles that taste even better now than they did three days ago. Here are a few make-ahead favorites from Copywriters’ Kitchen:
- Spicy Two-Bit Black-Eyed Peas with Coriander and Fresh Ginger
- Bucatini all’Amatriciana—store or freeze sauce before adding cream and Parmesan
- Curried Long Island Cheese Pumpkin Soup
- Prepare double-batches: Same theory as cook-athon, sans frenzy. On the weekend or whenever you have more leisure, double up on recipes, then store and freeze an extra meal.
- Prepare and freeze scratch staples: When you’re in a jam, that bag of dried pinto beans doesn’t do you much good. Prepare and freeze staples so they’re always at hand. Like Tuscans, my family are mangiafagioli—big bean eaters—so I try to have a ready supply of frozen pintos, chickpeas and white beans at all times. (So easy to cook: Before you start work, throw the beans in a crockpot, see photos, below. When they’re done—don’t overcook—spoon into 2-3 cup storage containers with tightly fitted lids and freeze.) You can combine beans with items from the Frugal Foodie Staples List for quick chili, soup, hummus and other bean dips.
Wash and pick over beans, then.... 
...put beans in crockpot, cover with water, add a pinch of salt and let them slow simmer for several hours.
Other great make-ahead-and-freeze staples:- Breadcrumbs: Use them in meatballs and meatloaf and for breading meat, fish or tofu. Try breadcrumbs in place of seasoned flour in Recipe-Ready Tofu.
- Croutons are a great way to use up day-old Italian or other bread. They freeze beautifully and are yummy in salads, soups or as a snack dipped in vinaigrette or Caeser’s dressing.
- Grass-fed chicken, meat and Recipe-Ready Tofu: Cut up and divide large chicken or meat into manageable portions and freeze. See directions for making and freezing tofu here.
Photo courtesy of bobster1985 Library of Congress.
