How to Operate a Kitchen and Meals for Men Who Cook, by An Organized Mom.

Dear Guys,
We assume you realize that cooking is a manly skill to have and better than fast food every day. It is cheaper and more useful that fixing the lawnmower. How often do you have to do that, after all? There is a good way to have your favorite foods, made as you like it, within budget and without hassle.Skeptical?  I would be too if I didn’t do this every month for my family.

Whether you get paid every week, every two weeks or by the month, a list of meals with a main dish, sides, occasional desserts and snacks is necessary to thrifty living. Breakfast foods, need to be in stock, lunch if you eat at home or pack your own food for better health of body and billfold.

Start by collecting your, favorite recipes and put them on 4 X 6 inch cards once you have taken out the bad stuff and substituted good ingredients.  All those low fat recipes can be modified to be not so sugary. Too much carbohydrate leads to hypertension if consumed to excess. Specify olive oil as oil and organic butter, not margarine.  Add notes to serve this particular dish with such and so of a fruit or vegetable for the fiber and enzyme content.  You can do this on commercial breaks or devote a set block of time to this project.  Even one set of recipe cards for a single day every day for a month will get you’re the list if you really aren’t into projects.

You can also cheat and note the recipe name on its own card with modifications you might want and the page number and name of the recipe book it is in. Record the ingredients needed if not the proportions on the card. A recipe book and cook book is roughly the same item but if you need instructions, The Joy of Cooking is a standard. It tells you how to prepare the dishes.  Everyone needs to learn from some source and this is a good one for any cook.  

Now you have a stack of recipes done.  Put them in a file box with an alphabet divider set.  File by alphabetical order*, putting the recipe cards in front of the letter or divider. This works  best which you will see when you use the process in real life.

* You could also use different dividers and organize by main courses, salads, hot side dishes, soups, desserts, holiday meals and whatever makes sense to you.  “Family Recipes” in my file box designates recipes that are specialities of various family members. Labels are so handy.

The neat thing about this is you have meal ideas right in front of you in a box.  Recipe cards can even be bought with colorful designs on them to add cheer to your cooking tasks.  Find joy in everyday things and soon you are surrounded by it. Use this set of dish choices to plan meals by taking a recipe out and putting it in front of the rest of the cards as the menu stack for the time period between paydays or shopping dates.  You can just grab a card for your wallet to accompany your list if you shop by the day, as some people do. Your card can have the ingredients you need and of course, you have a list of staples you stock in on a regular basis, such as flour, olive oil, frozen or canned vegetables, fruit, bread, soy or cow milk, spices, herbs, raw vegetables, like celery, garlic onions, whatever you use all the time. You know: basics.

The reason for a staples list is you have taken the recipe and listed what you  need from the store on a shopping list. Do  recon of what’s in the ‘fridge and on the shelves to eat that you need for your recipe and side dishes. ( A salad, or hot vegetable, soup, bread, rice or pasta dish are considered side dishes.) Write down all that you need to buy for the meals you are planning.

A note about shopping lists.  They are easier than one might think.  When you run low on something, not Out of something, put it on the list you keep handy for just this purpose.  A stenographer’s pad tucked in the cupboard, or a spiral notebook, or a magnetized list made for this purpose will work.  Mine is a list hanging by a magnet on the refrigerator.  I clip a pen to it and am ready for anything I need to record for when I go to the store. Yank the list as you head out to go shopping or take it with you to work and shop on the way home. Piece of cake.

By the way a list helps you buy what you need, get everything and not buy odd stuff you don’t have a use for, but it looked good. This is thrifty management of your funds. Use this method for replacing shampoo, razors, dish soap, laundry needs, energy-saving light bulbs, antifreeze for your vehicle, new golf pants not in lime green, deck stain, lawn fertilizer, cleaning supplies, Anniversary gifts and greeting cards, even a note to get your driver’s license renewed by your birthday is a good thing to carry forward to remember it in time. Shopping is more than groceries. (And men wonder where the home budget money goes!)

Back to food management: a salad can be a main dish if you make it large enough and with enough ingredients to be filling.  (Serve with a sandwich or soup to make a salad a filling man-sized meal.) Soups are easy and varied, and sandwiches can be made with speciality breads, on toasted English muffins, pita bread halves, tortillas, the sky is the limit. Put your favorites on the list if you have the fillings for sandwiches in stock or on the list.

Record the planned menu on a menu list like a magnetized memo pad for the ‘fridge.  When you are done, you know what you can serve and that you have the ingredients on hand at the right time.  This is also a reminder to thaw out ingredients, marinate the day before and handy tricks like that.  This is so organized you will wonder how you ever lived without employing method to your eating regimen.

Cross off what is eaten during the week on your memo pad and you will know what’s for dinner at a glance.  Return the recipe cards as you use them for next time.  Life is so much better organized.

So now you are a genius of planning balanced decent meals and you even know how to shop for best prices and best deals.  You are supposed to be mathematically inclined: do the math in your head as to what will make more servings for the money or costs less per unit.  Is it on sale and does this sale constitute a real bargain or a gimmick to sell an item usually displayed on an “endcap”, a display the store is pushing at the end of an aisle.  Check down the aisle for other prices for cheaper brands. Don’t shop hungry: it will cost you more in impulse buys and added calories.

While you are cooking, clean up as you go.  Rinse out the mixing bowl while the casserole is baking and rinse the whisk before the food sets on it into cement.  A container for soaking silverware is good.  The contents can even be washed quickly to keep the area clean and the silverware handy until the dishwasher is full enough to run.  Rinse off the food after scraping the plate into the garbage or to the dog, and store the food-free plate in the dishwasher to keep plates and so on from piling up into a dismal batch you don’t want to touch.  If they sit with food attached, you may need to sand blast to get them clean.  Also, use a scrubbing “cloth” to wash with because it takes off more clingy food than a dish cloth will. This saves time and is cheap enough to use a new one often.

If you don’t have a dishwasher, a sink with fresh dishwater as you start cooking is valuable.  Wash and rinse prep stuff like mixing bowls, stirring silverware, pots and pans, as they are used and done with, cutting boards need a wash, and set into the drainer all rinsed and out of the way of your counter space.  A dish cloth to wipe up mess goes back into the fresh suds after a use.  Dish towels aren’t for wiping up counters, the “dish” cloth is.  (It just is: deal with it.)  
And for the love of all that’s holy and neat, throw away plastic covers from the cheese slices; the empty boxes your ingredients came in, including your cereal boxes; the cans your vegetables came in.  Do not just let them sit on the counter.  Throw the waste material (trash)  into a container, a tall kitchen wastebasket with plastic bag liner to corral the trash for the city and empty often enough to not draw bugs.  Empty it daily or when the lid no longer fits flat anymore. If it gets to smelling horrible, empty it now.  

Wipe up the juice your chicken parts left behind when you open the package and dispose of the Styrofoam tray the parts came in.  Salmonella is lurking, not to mention the mess is unbelievable if you do not throw away crude as you go. Now, when you are ready to sit down and eat, your kitchen isn’t a disaster area.

If you are wise, you will wash up the dishes after each meal especially if you are cooking for one or two.  I am lazy and thrifty and I pile them up until a sink full is ready to save on soap and hot water, but my prep dishes and so forth are done as I go. I wipe up the stove after making a mess of it; the shelves of the refrigerator are individual mini jobs often; The sweeping of the kitchen, a weekly job if not sooner, is followed by a quick mop up. While waiting for something to boil or nuke,  wipe up cabinet doors, and drawer faces. The kitchen management is a bunch of pie slices.  Knock off a slice at a time until it is needful to start the process over to keep ahead of the grime that will collect into stone fossils if you don’t.  (I know a man who lived with room mates when younger and no one cleaned anything, shopped successfully or knew how to cook.  Incredible!)

Clean the microwave by nuking (microwaving)  a cup of water in it for a minute to soften the inside stuck-on food. Use the hot water for something useful: don’t just waste it.  This moisture makes the stuck-on food soft enough to wipe us easily.  Pour a cup of used dish water or the water from the microwave cleaning onto the floor and mop it up to keep ahead of the floor gunk. A 1/4 cup of bleach in rinse water makes a less soapy fluid to mop with and keeps germs down too.  Do not use bleach in your wash water: it will scar the glassware and is bad for you too. Don’t absorb the chlorine through your hands while washing dishes.

Put your organic non-greasy food scraps into its own container to empty onto a mini-compost pile instead of adding it to the water system via a garbage disposal.  Be green and smart because. it makes compost-cum-potting soil if you turn it and keep it wet.  This stuff can be sold to gardeners or used personally.  Cover the compost to keep the smell down for yourself and your neighbors unless you have a corner in your yard to do this in.

This is a starting course in managing a kitchen to avoid the scornful epithet, “bachelors,” or just “men.” It isn’t rocket science, but it was expected of us girls back in the day and as a result, the male population never learned how to live indoors like civilized people. That was a shameful oversight we have tried to remedy here for today’s successful male. Go forth and prosper with neatness and organization. * * *