How to find time to cook? Make the commitment

The other day I unleashed a string of obscenities on my Tumblr blog after reading ?How Do Working Parents Do It?? by Pete Wells. He?s a columnist, a working dad, and I called him a bad person.

Given some thought, I don?t think Mr. Wells is a bad person. I don?t know him. But little these days galls me more than people who complain about situations of their own doing, particularly when it has to do with hours in the day.

I understand people work. I understand people have long commutes and can?t get home until 7 pm. When I was in those circumstances, I looked to change them as quickly as I could, changed jobs and moved. Now my commute?s about 25 minutes, and dinner is served by 6:30 at the latest.

So what?s the key to all this? I know how to cook, I?m aware of my limitations, and I know enough to plan ahead. Oh, and I put cooking first.

I don?t need to air my dirty laundry here (ha!), but I do want to talk about menu planning and buying groceries. Planning a week?s menu (or nearly a week) is crucial if you want to be able to cook dinner for your family every night. If you?re one of those people who must stop by the market every evening to grab the freshest and most interesting ingredients, then you?ve picked shopping over cooking, and there?s little I can do to help.

But let?s say you want to fix that. Let?s say you want to be able to sit down every night and enjoy a moderately unhurried meal with your family. Then you have to be mindful of your time.

Sunday: roast chicken (or pork roast, or beef roast) with potatoes, carrots and other vegetables

Sundays are wonderful because they?re unrushed, and a long-cooked, roasted entrée is ideal. It doesn?t require a lot of monitoring. Just salt the meat and vegetables, pre-heat the oven (yes, in that order), stick everything into a casserole or roasting pan, and cover it in foil. When the oven’s hot, slide the pan onto the middle rack, set the timer and walk away. Now you can play with the kids. Or check email, or write a blog post or read a magazine. Whatever.

Monday: Chicken tacos (or pulled pork sandwiches or beef and broccoli stir fry)

Tuesday: – (I teach Tuesday nights, so my wife and the kids have to fend for themselves)

Wednesday: Pan-seared steak, Brussels sprouts, simple salad (This might also be a chicken frittata, depending on how large the original bird. I might also do vegetable beef soup, if there?s any beef roast left. The pork is always gone by now because pork is delicious)

Thursday: Steak sandwiches (maybe this night I?ll do the stir fry with the left-over steak. Again, vegetable beef soup is an option here, as is another egg dish)

Friday: Maybe curried lentils with rice, or potato and leek soup. Friday is usually a quick, low-prep meal made with staples from the cupboard. It?s been a while since we shopped, and the week is long. Sometimes we?ll order a pizza.

Saturday: We just figure it out. (Again, there?s no strict timetable on Saturdays, so we have a lot more flexibility to, for example, go to the market, look at what?s fresh and then compare that against what we feel like eating. Saturdays are also good for experiments.)

And that?s it. The next week might be some variation on the above or something completely different. Spinach artichoke dip, or a simple supper of brie,  bread and grapes. Even when we had purchased a CSA share and picked up our vegetables on Wednesday, the plan was the same: survey what we have and make a menu plan accordingly. Wednesday nights we often had nothing but fresh vegetables with homemade dressing, or something like wilted spinach with grilled onions and salami. Simple, delicious.

For me, the hours between 5 and 7 are pretty sacred. That?s the time I spend going home, cooking, and eating with the people I love most in the world. I know I?m not going to have time to figure out what I?m going to cook, and I?m not going to have time to shop. I understand these limitations and work around them. I also know my strengths: I have fair knife skills, so I can do prep work fairly quickly. If I didn?t have good knife skills, I might buy vegetables already diced, or spend some time on a Sunday dicing vegetables and parsing them into freezer bags.

You probably don?t have time to do all the things you?d like during the day. Many people don?t. However, if you find yourself complaining about the things you wish you had time for, and you haven?t given up all you can to make those few things happen for you, then I?ll claim you?ve picked bitching over action.

Mr. Wells asked how do working parents do it? For me, the answer is pretty simple: I choose to do it. I don?t talk about it, I don?t fret about it, I just make it happen. Evening after evening, meal after meal. I don?t go to the gym, and I don?t watch a lot of television. But I don?t complain about either of those facts. They exist because I cook dinner every night, and I?m happiest that way.