I've always taken an interest in cooking, although up until I transitioned I never really did much of it. I'm not saying one thing necessarily has anything to do with the other, just simply that's how it's worked out for me. I did touch on this a little bit in an entry a couple of months ago (So What's For Dinner?), but I thought I'd go back to it and elaborate a bit.
For those that aren't necessarily familiar with our "living arrangements", let me touch on that briefly - although one of these days I suppose I should write about the way we came to own the house, that's not really the point here. Currently it is myself and my wife J, my ex-wife/best friend/de-facto sister M and her husband M2, and P who is M and I's daughter.
Planning meals for the house does tend to be a challenge due to the varied tastes of everyone (that's a story in and of itself), but even more so because of the work schedules of everyone - M/M2/P all work overnights, J is on a "rotation" where she works early two days, later two days, and then off two days (although it changes at times such as around the holidays), and I work more or less "bankers hours" although I tend to do a lot of work off hours since I work from home and find times like now when it's quiet good for getting things done.
With the schedules and eating preferences being what they are, we've pretty much settled on dinner about 8:45pm every night. It's a bit later than I personally prefer, but it fits in nicely with everyone's schedules for the most part - J's late nights are a bit of an issue with that so I try to make something I can either reheat easily for her, or better yet something I can split and cook fresh when she gets home.
So my intention going forward I am going to start posting some of my favorite recipes and thoughts from the kitchen. For today I think I'll talk about some particular things I do when it comes to meals and preparation. Now I don't know if it is just because I pick things that are "more involved" than I probably should, if I'm just too slow/diligent with how I do things, or if I simply under-estimate how long a particular meal is going to take; but it seems that more often than not I was ending up in a push to have dinner ready at 8:45pm and that was a bit of a problem since M/M2/P leave for work about 9:45 or so. So over the last few months I've gotten to the point where I try and make meals where I can do the majority of the "prep" beforehand in the morning or afternoon and simply do the actual baking/frying/whatever, at dinner time. For some meals this makes dinner a real snap as if it's say Baked Spaghetti (which I'll be posting later this week), I can get that completely made in advance and simply have to pop it into the oven about 8pm or so. I can also have the garlic cheese bread ready to go and as soon as the spaghetti comes out the bread goes in and it's done about the time the spaghetti is "set" a bit. For other meals there's still a lot to do at "dinner time" such as if I'm making homemade chicken strips or catfish nuggets; but even those I can have the prep work done in advance, but frying 3-5lbs of chicken/fish - especially if I'm using a batter - well that still takes time. However, a meal like that also lends itself to frying some of it for M/P and/or M2's dinner and then frying the rest when J gets home so I try and make those kinds of meals on her late nights.
Of course I bring some of the issues on myself. I don't tend to go as overboard as M does - she will make multiple entrees to try and suit everyone and multiple sides for the same reason and she has a real problem getting everything done at the same time and often we ended up with some dishes that were very good and some that were cold from being done too early. I tend to keep it to a single entree and 1-2 sides; but I also have my particular nuances that can cause issues. One of the biggest is that I refuse to use pre-grated cheese anymore. It simply doesn't work as well in many dishes, I don't think it tastes as good either, so I grate all of my own - with one exception and that's grated parmesan - I buy that in a jar, often times as a mix of parmesan and something else. But grating enough cheese for the size meals I often end up making takes time - not a lot of time - but often a good 10-15 minutes by the time I get the grater, a cutting board to grate on, a container to put it in, the cheese itself out and opened, and cleaning it up; and invariably that would throw me behind. Sometimes I will go ahead and do this ahead of time, but I'm not keen on doing that if I can help it since fresh grated cheese tends to stick together and I don't like that. I have seen some solutions to doing that, but for now I'm sticking with grating it as I need it if I can help it.
I should probably cut this short now as I have a (very early) conference call with somebody over in Ireland for work, although she's apparently running late which is a bit agitating since I'm up well earlier than I should be to account for the time difference. So with that, I hope everyone is having a great week.
- M
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