I'm stuck in 1940, and I can't get out...

Eating delicious, real food definitely increases the time spent in the kitchen, and though I've gotten better and more efficient at food prep, I still spend 3-6 hours in the kitchen, either on Saturday or Sunday, usually, in order to get the dishes prepared and the prep done so that we can eat well all week without waiting until 9 PM for dinner.  I do not love spending 4+ hours in the kitchen, but I do love eating really delicious food all week long, so I've tried to make them more interesting. I find that I dread my "kitchen days" much less now that I've made them more challenging by trying to accomplish as much as possible within my time frame. By making the work harder, more complicated, more challenging, it keeps me from getting bored.

My previous week's kitchen day, this was the list of chores:

Truffles

• pack lunches
• chop red peppers for guinea pigs
• roast red peppers (for hummus I'm making later this week)
• chop veggies for nachos
• make cheezy rice for nachos
• make double batch of veggie burgers to freeze (for lunches, snacks, meals on the go, etc.)
• make double batch of eggplant curry burgers to freeze (for lunches, snacks, meals on the go, etc.)
• make potato seitan miso stew (I made and froze seitan a couple of weeks ago)
• make 3-bean tomato curry soup
• make peanut butter truffles, (which turned out so well that I experimented and made cashew & almond butter truffles and a batch of strawberry truffles as well)
• peel and prep head of garlic (I like to keep prepared garlic and ginger on hand for quick use in recipes)
• pressure cook black beans (I keep a variety of cooked beans in the freezer, so I don't have to use canned)
• make trail mix
• cut and dehydrate sweet potatoes for dog treats

Sweet Potato chews for the dogs

Prior week's list:  

• pressure cook kidney beans
• roast red peppers (for hummus)
• make hummus (for coating kale chips)
• make kale chips
• make peanut lime sriracha marinade
• chop veggies (for roasting) and marinate
• chop and marinate tofu
• roast veggies
• bake tofu
• make black bean sweet potato chili
• pack lunches
• chop veggies for pizza
• make pizza
• make chocolate-covered marzipan

Each week I try to add more and up the challenge a bit, to see how much I can get done without making irreparable mistakes.  Each week there are different tasks and different dishes, and that keeps it from being horrifically boring.  It makes for a much smoother, more pleasant week, when I have the meals already planned and either ready to reheat or just throw together and heat.  I am, begrudgingly, starting to dread the kitchen days a little less and sometimes almost enjoy myself.  I think I am developing Stockholm Syndrome with my kitchen. 

I will never go back to eating processed crap and after eating so very well for so long, I don't think any of us would be able to tolerate food from a less-intense kitchen schedule, so I've accepted that it's an unfortunate but permanent weekend necessity.  My challenge now is to try to get better and more efficient each week, so I can accomplish more in less time. That's what I'm working on refining now.  I currently need one weekend day (at least) for grading and one for cooking, which leaves me with no weekend. I have dreams of maximizing my efficiency such that I could get both done in one day, but that doesn't feel very realistic at this point.

I have a little fantasy that L will develop a passion for cooking and will take over the kitchen duties. She has shown no inclination to do so, but I can dream. So far, her interest in learning to cook has been focused on the foods she likes to eat.  She has mastered making a few snack/dessert-type foods, with her favorite being sliced, roasted, seasoned potatoes. I am much happier with her making and eating these than chips, so I don't complain when I come down in the morning to find she's been leaving kitchen messes for me.  She has learned--(as we all have) that the preparation of food, touching it, smelling it, putting effort into it--makes eating it more enjoyable.  Another benefit is that one is much less likely to eat absent mindedly if one has to wash, slice, season, and cook the potatoes than if one can just grab a hand full of chips out of a bag. It's a good cure for eating out of boredom.

I would like to illustrate this post with pretty food pictures, but I find food photography fairly difficult. Whenever I try to photograph food, it never looks as delicious as it tastes, and sometimes it looks pretty gross.  I know that it takes some skill to get the beautiful and appetizing food shots that I enjoy looking at in the cookbooks and my favorite websites, and I just don't have the time or interest right now to work on those skills.  I have done a little reading on the subject and find myself horrified by how much food gets wasted and how long it really takes to get that perfect shot. I don't have the patience for that!

This is my kitchen planning board.  On the right side, I jot down my list of weekend "kitchen-day" chores.  On the left side, I keep a shopping list, and as I run out/get low on things while cooking, I add them to the list.  Once each meal is either prepped or done (depending on the meal and how well it keeps), I write it on the day of the week I plan to consume the meal.  By the end of my kitchen day, the board is a mess, but it helps keep me organized. I can snap a photo and have my shopping list ready to go to the store with me, and then clean up the board, leaving only the planned meals for the week.

My family enjoys modifying and adding to my list almost every week. I find myself wondering when they will run out of strange items to add to the list.  Note the three strange entries for this week (toasted spleen chips, fart goblin stew, and juicy groin).  They were written by two different people, so both M & L have taken to adding to my list.  I'm not sure which of the two started it, but it has apparently become a tradition.

On the chore list above, one of the entries was to make sausage. This was a new recipe for me, and it turned out very well. It's an Isa recipe, and hers are always hits. It was fairly simple and much less expensive (and more delicious) than buying vegan sausages.  I made this one:  Italian sausage, but there is another one on her site I plan to try soon:  Smoky maple sausages.

I used this recipe for the peanut butter truffles, but I did not use the rice crisp cereal at all. I used crunchy peanut butter. Also, I didn't have coconut flour, so I made oat flour and used that.  They were still ridiculously good.