Why from-scratch cooking changes everything

If your family is like mine, they treasure making dinner at home from scratch. There is quiet satisfaction in using fresh meats and veggies you’ve hand-selected, because limes that resemble Manuel Noriega’s face usually end up being past prime. A good lime has the skin of a Prada model and a gentle firmness in the hand akin to a full water balloon.

There are nuances and flavors imbued in our bolognese sauces that Pragoo and Raoma’s just don’t present. Even if we resort (obviously, y’all—time constraints!) to a store-bought sauce, it gets doctored up. Injected with an authentic broth and dressed with fresh chopped herbs. Healed! There is also a real cost on our health in eating store-bought or drive-thru, and often we feel less than; our wallets feel it too. We pay near triple for asparagus in the baking tin, slathered with a dicey herb butter that we pop in the oven once it preheats. What we gain from home cooking, however painstaking it can be, is control, pride in our work, and—always—better flavors.

So thank you for visiting Sunday Forward. Everyone can cook, but so many of us are devoted to other weeknight commitments and find it more difficult to meal prep for a whole week. Or we don’t eat our leftovers—hence spending more than we should and begrudging the Wednesday-night fridge purge before trash day. At our house, we have come up with solutions that I’d love to share with you, and I hope they help you achieve success in the kitchen like we have.

Wait—success is a big word around here. Let’s instead say, our moveable feast: not Hemingway’s Paris experience, but our own richness in experience even when the pan instead of the fish became blackened. Or the long-lived truth learned when we discovered the stuffed bell peppers need the full cook time suggested in the generations-old church cookbook. Just like the classics, we cannot let this thing that makes us whole die because some easier, softer way took hold. Cook with us.

1. By putting together multi-use sauces. For example, the Mediterranean Herbs week in the system calls for a gorgeous, bright Mediterranean chimichurri sauce that you’ll make a few cups of and use for two-thirds of the meals that week.
2. By bulk-buying at least one meat per week and adjusting that choice if needed to suit a budget, a sale, or your taste buds frankly. Don’t like bone-in chicken thighs? (Don’t know how—that crispy fat is better than most French fries.) Okay, trade it out for cutlets or chicken breasts. Not feeling lamb chops in this economy? We feel that too; let’s swap for a small whole chicken instead, and stuff it with the butter, rosemary, and garlic all the same.
3. By tailoring a meal plan around a specific regional cuisine week to week. The theme is there, so mostly the seasonings and the herbs and add-ins are similar too. Mirin in three this week, basil in four of five next week, and “oh, that’s what cardamom is for!” the week of Thanksgiving. And finally (drumroll please)…
4. By ensuring two of the five meals are on the table in roughly thirty minutes. True thirty-minute meals, often because it’s sheet-pan-maxxing or quick grilling or utilizing a “one pan on the stovetop” method. That’s how! We progress in meal structure toward the end, but we still ensure a few meals a week will be close to thirty for the working part of the cooking.
5. Oh wait, there’s one more—and it cinches this deal: by using five ingredients or fewer for a few of the meals per week. Don’t count ‘always there’ pantry items. That’s salt, pepper, olive oil, and garlic. Our household sometimes skips meat on Fridays and all through the Lenten season, so that too is accounted for. If y’all eat meat every day, then just add some of the bulk-buy meat for that week to your vegetarian and/or pescatarian meals.

In this newsletter, in the coming weeks, I will introduce the five-meals-per-week system. It also comes with three desserts per week—totally optional, but a blatantly perky perk. Use Saturday to plan and buy groceries, and it will take you from Sunday Forward. Commit where you choose and adapt it for your household. The system is built for ease of adaptability and runs 26 weeks. That’s essentially an entire year if your five meals happen to cover two weeks because the fam does all three: meal prep, eat some leftovers, and buy in bulk.

If your family can only cook two weeks out of the month, this plan works too. Maybe it’s just time to break out of your tacos–pizza–spaghetti–pork chops–fried chicken, Coke, and white bread funk and explore what Japanese izakaya and California Fresh behold. Mmmmm, miso glaze and Green Goddess dressing… Hopefully we all have a blast in the kitchen and benefit—let our hearts and bellies be filled!

In the meantime, here’s a meal my husband and I threw together with leftover chorizo, some items he’d just walked in with from the store, about an hour to get it done in, and an unexpected guest. It all worked out, and beautifully at that!

I’ll keep you updated, and please let me know how this recipe worked out for you! My challenge, dear readers, is for you to report back. Did you swap up ingredients because one kid refuses bell pepper? Are you scared of chorizo because you heard (correctly) that traditional chorizo has some pancreas thrown in? Or did you do a one-eighty and pull off an Italamerican version with hot Italian sausage and a quick marinara instead? I look forward to hearing about your wins.

If I hear from you that the bell peppers were a win, I will provide a free link for a to-die-for Lemon Pound Cake — like, pound your fist on the counter while you chew, it’s that good. It is an early summer tradition around here, and it’s Gramma’s recipe, but better. It has taken a few years to perfect. These rich Greek yogurts have been a game-changer for quick breads. It’s rich, and the crumb is perfect if you wrap it and slice it the day after it bakes.