actyourwage | Challenge the first: Cook dinner every night for a month

Take-away and eating out costs a lot more. We've all got busy lives and finding the time and energy to prepare every meal is really difficult.

For a month, I'm going to make an effort to cook every single night. I have flatmates and we share the cooking so it's easier for me than for some. Still, it's going to require some planning and preparation. Who's with me? Comment if you want to take the challenge!

Needless to say, your commitment to this can absolutely vary. I am giving myself a pass for nights I have gigs and can't eat dinner beforehand. I can't really take a boxed meal to a gig! Also, it doesn't apply when I'm out on a date. You may decide that there is one night a week where friends come over and you have takeaway. It's all good!

What this challenge is aiming to prevent are those times when it's been a day from hell and you come home and look at the ingredients you have and you go "... stuff it. I'm getting take-away."

It'll require a bit of prep. You'll need to do your shopping a week in advance, which means planning your menu. I'll do a post on that on Friday and we'll be starting the actual challenge on Monday.

Of course, if your pay cycle doesn't synch with the challenge, feel free to pick it up at a later date.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

killing_rose

I'm a college student with really *fun* food allergies, so I do this as often as humanly possible. However, given that I have two weeks of spring break starting Friday night, it challenges me to do this while cooking for...5 people, at minimum. (It's so much easier when there's one of you; you can make a basic recipe on Sunday and adapt it until Wednesday, and do it again on Friday or Saturday.)

Question: If we're doing a weekly recipe post, do you also want the menus that we're planning for the following week? It might help inspire others.

jamethiel

My household's got five people in it! We share out the cooking. Three of us share the cooking, doing two nights each and the last night of the week rotates. (One of the people is a child, and the other just gets home from work too damn late for the rest of us to eat, so)

Buy a crockpot! A crockpot will be your SAVIOUR with large amounts of people to feed. And most of my recipes will be geared towards large numbers. What are your allergies? I'll see what I can come up with.

Excluding my sister-in-law, it's just not *safe* to let the others cook. (One thinks that cream of mushroom soup should be added to rice to make a complete meal. Another still asks me how to cut potatoes. The third's a pyromaniac who burns food.) So when I'm home, there's two of sharing the cooking.

I have a crockpot at home; I just haven't gotten a chance to play with it. (Clearly, this will be my test.) Dairy (casein), gluten (celiac, not technically an allergy), and soy. Then there's the wheat sensitivity of SIL, my sister's pine nut allergy, and the fact that everyone works better if we're eating meat. (Yay for the genetic gift of strange form of anemia.)

Eek! Those are some very good reasons to cook right there! I share your casein allergy (I think. They wanted to do more tests and I went "Does it change the treatment (ie. avoidance)? No? Awesome, I decline to be stuck with needles then.")

Can you have polenta, or is it off the list? I have an italian casserole recipe that will make your eyes roll back, it's so good.

Funny, that's what I said. "We know it exists. We don't need to figure out how bad it is. Unless you come up with a way that doesn't involve the sharp objects."

Polenta is on the list. (I even have some. I have *no idea* what I'm doing with it--I give myself one "it looks interesting" foodstuff a month. This one was two months ago...)

Polenta is great! Polenta dumplings. OM NOM NOM

exhausted_pigeon

I find cooking it and then serving it with mushrooms fried with garlic and some balsamic vinegar works?

(or putting chilli on it.)

inkstone

Omigosh, can we (and by we, I really mean me) ask for crockpot recipes? My mother just gave me a crockpot as a housewarming present but as my cooking knowledge tends to be limited to stir fry, I could really use some help in learning how to use one effectively.

ABSOLUTELY. I have the world's BEST baked bean recipe. It works out as the same price per serve as ye generic tinned baked beans, and contains stuff like ham hock and maple syrup! It is so yummy!