Start with a Clean Kitchen

Families tend to congregate in the kitchen, bringing with them newspapers, mail, backpacks, school papers, toys, and a thousand other little this-and-thats. Don’t allow it. Set a new policy: The kitchen is for cooking and eating only. Why? It’s hard to get motivated about cooking if you have to clean up a mess first, not to mention what it does to your mood. The opposite also holds true: A clean, bright, inviting kitchen can be a wonderful oasis after a day of craziness.

Clueless when it comes to cleaning? Here's how to keep your kitchen clean and safe.

Enjoy Cooking

Sure, not everyone loves cooking. But there’s no reason to not like doing it. If the thought of cooking brings dread, you need an attitude adjustment. Cooking is a pleasure, far easier than many non-cooks realize. For your health, your pleasure, your pocketbook, you should learn—or relearn—the pleasures of cooking. Make it a project. Spend time with your friends and family while they cook so that you can absorb the methods and routines. Consider taking a class, or buy an introductory cookbook. Most of all, lose your fear. It is actually harder to be a bad cook than a good cook, particularly if you use good ingredients.

To get yourself started check out our guide to become a better cook.

Plan a Week’s Worth of Dinners

Every Friday night or Saturday morning, sit down with a pad of paper and your favourite cookbooks or cooking magazines. Think about what’s in your freezer and fridge, what your family likes to eat, what your upcoming week entails. Then plan out the week’s worth of menus (leave one night for pizza night). At the same time, write out your grocery list. Now post the list of menus on the kitchen refrigerator or bulletin board so it’s the first thing you see when you get home. Voilà! No more thinking ahead. Just follow your own instructions.

Digitalize Dinner

Keep your grocery list and recipe list on the computer. That way, you can just rotate your weekly menus (along with the grocery list) every month or every two months. Thus, once you have, say, eight weeks of menus, you’re set for the rest of the year!

Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

If you have kids older than 10 or another adult who gets home before you do, get them started on dinner. For example, you might ask your spouse to pick up ingredients on the way home, your teen to start chopping vegetables for the salad and fill the pasta pot with water, your preteen to gather needed ingredients for a given recipe and put them on the counter for you, preheat the oven, and set the table. Yes, they may think of it as a chore, but if you build in a little opportunity for them to “create,” (i.e., with place cards for dinner, fancy napkin foldings, their own recipes) it will make your kids more interested in nutritious food and trying new things.

Stock Your Freezer with Homemade Meals

Stews, soups, chili, and gumbo all freeze wonderfully. Figure out how much of a one-pot meal you need to feed your family for one dinner, and then buy plastic containers of that size. Make a pot of your family favourites on the weekend and you’ll have four or five meals tucked in the freezer. A smart freezer is filled with plastic containers of several different homemade meals, each labeled with the contents and the date it was made.

It's also a good idea to keep a stash or ready-to-cook frozen veggies on hand. There's nothing wrong with freezing freezing fresh foods!

Go the Next Step with Soup Stock

We are big advocates of soup for dinner. It’s healthy, filling, delicious, and easy to make. If you keep homemade stock in the freezer, or cans of low-salt broth in the pantry, it often takes just a few minutes to whip together an impromptu vegetable soup. Use a quart of stock or low-sodium chicken broth as the base. Then just toss in a variety of chopped veggies such as spinach, carrots, corn, lima beans, green beans, and zucchini. Make sure to include chickpeas and other beans. They provide excellent protein, lots of fibre, an array of micronutrients, and are filling and satisfying at a relatively low cost in calories. To round out the meal, have some whole grain bread (dip it in olive oil rather than spreading it with butter) and a salad.

Although canned broth is convenient, it’s not as flavourful as homemade boullion. You can make your own beef, chicken, fish, or vegetable stock.

Go For Classics

Include three old standbys on your weekly menu. No one expects you to come up with a new meal every night. Pick three low-fuss, nutritious recipes that you and the family enjoy, and, most important, that you can almost cook in your sleep. For example, you might designate Monday as pasta or casserole night, Tuesday as grilled fish night, and Wednesday as roasted chicken night. Include similar vegetable and grain side dishes as well. This eases the headache of grocery shopping—you’ll need many of the same groceries from one week to the next.

Have Breakfast for Dinner

A great “breakfast” option for dinner is an omelet. Quick and easy to make, a great protein source, and relatively low in calories. Fill it with veggies instead of cheese, and you’ve got a complete meal in a frying pan!

Use Leftovers Wisely

Use parts of last night’s dinner for tonight’s meal. This allows you to cook once and eat twice. For example, if you have roasted chicken one night, use the leftovers to serve up chicken fajitas or chicken salad the next. Similarly, if you make grilled fish one night, try fish tacos the next. Prepare all key protein foods—chicken, turkey, fish, and so on—in larger-than-needed amounts so they will last two nights instead of one. Do the same with rice and other grain side dishes. Serve it up as a regular side dish one night and use the leftovers to make a casserole, stir-fry, or soup the next.