Recipes from a Pandemic

Remember all the cooking you did during lock down?

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. Repeat.

If you had kids at home doing online school, OY. Mine had 20 min for lunch so it needed to be ready. There was no time to preheat the oven, boil water, or assemble more than a PB & J.

We didn’t eat out much, most take-out was only so-so and all the packaging used for transporting the food depressed me. As a result, there was A LOT, A LOT of eating in.

What’s For Dinner?

So, what to cook night-after-night-after-night? One of my go-to resources for recipes is The New York Times. They pivoted nicely during the pandemic replacing the Travel Section (sniff, sniff) with a new one, At Home. In it were crafts, outdoor activities, and, my favorite, “Five Dishes to Cook this Week”.

Most of the recipes called for pantry staples and we quick to assemble. I’m old school and cut out ones I thought would be crowd pleasers, good for a date night, or simply appealed to me (hello, Gyeran Bap).

Now that life has somewhat normalized, I still cook most days. However, my recipe binder was in bad shape. Recipes were stuffed and loosely shoved into sections. I was easily frustrated looking for inspiration and often couldn’t find what I was looking for, grrrr.

Tackling the Binder

The other day I just couldn’t stand it and decided it was high time to bring some order to this bulging collection of clippings. I grabbed the binder and headed to the dining room table. There I pulled out all the loose recipes and created labeled piles…

Toss (these looked good on paper but didn’t work for our family)
Chicken
Meat
Seafood
Veggie
Elsewhere (for soups, salads, desserts…these belong in a different binder).

Edit Sort Paperwork Organizing Brookside Kansas City MO — Sample of recipe categories.

Next it was time to integrate the recipes in their proper section of the binder. I like to use plastic labeled tabs with pockets for overrun storage and sleeve covers for the recipes to protect from spills.

Sort Edit Categorize Your Things Country Club Plaza KCMO — Supplies for organizing the recipe binder: tabbed dividers, page protectors, paper, scissors, tape (yep, I like it old school)

Meal Plan

Once all the recipes were in place, it was time to meal plan. If you don’t meal plan, I’d like to encourage you to do so. I can’t tell you how much angst and time is saved by meal planning. No more panic trips to the grocery store or that sinking feel of “Oh geez, what am I going to make for dinner?”

Sit down one day a week, if you can, flip through your favorite cookbook, website, or recipe binder and decide what to eat for the week. Take into consideration what’s going on that week for you and your family (after school activities, meetings, deadlines…). From your list of meals, you can then write out the grocery store list which saves you money by not buying duplicates already in your pantry. This also allows you to schedule a time to go to the store when it’s convenient for you.