Tilapia Taco with Black Beans & Corn
Rather than being a daily chore, cooking can be a daily stress-reliever: you can use your time in the kitchen to express your creativity, to unwind after a long day, to gain immediate satisfaction from serving healthy food to yourself and others…or all three! Here are some tips to help you enjoy your culinary adventures.
- Make self-assembly dinners (like the fish taco shown above). Not only does it save you the step of adding ingredients, it allows your guests to custom-flavor their meals. All you have to do is chop/grate/dice the separate ingredients and serve them in individual containers. Salads work particularly well for this kind of meal; so do hearty stews with toppings (think chili) and fold-’em-up type dishes such as tacos, burritos, sandwiches, wraps, and pitas.
- Instead of going to a restaurant, invite your friends into your kitchen and cook together (or ask each person to bring a dish). That way, no one is stuck doing all the work…and if your friends are familiar with a certain type of ethnic cooking, you can hold an impromptu cooking class. You’ll probably come up with your own fusion cuisine!
- Keep your kitchen clean and organized. A tidy kitchen is inviting to use; a messy one is not. Besides, cleaning as you go is much quicker than having to chisel off dried-on gunk the next day.
- Try sampling ethnic cuisine. If you have a favorite ethnic restaurant, make a mental note of your favorite dishes and then look up some recipes. Or pay a visit to your local library and head for the 640s–that’s where all the cookbooks hang out. They’ll be grouped by ethnicity, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for. (If I don’t have a particular cuisine in mind, I just let my hand trail along the shelf and then stop randomly on a book. Wherever it lands is whatever I cook.)
- Look for cheap and fun kitchen items at garage sales. Ceramic, glass, and metal items can be easily cleaned and can be great bargains. You’d be amazed at how many folks get a full set of china on their wedding day and then never use it. (Or they get three sets and only use one of them.) And some items can be beginner art projects to boot–I got this champagne glass for 10 cents and then painted it. For 10 cents, who cares if it doesn’t turn out perfectly?
- Crank up the music! Cooking should not be a high-pressure situation. Put on some good tunes, sing along, and dance if you want to. (Just try not to drop anything.) I’ve found cooking to be a great way to practice bellydance moves–if you can shimmy while you’re whipping up a meringue, then you’ve got some great hip isolation.
- Give yourself plenty of time. Of course, not all meals are going to be an objet d’ art, but even a slapdash one can be more enjoyable to prepare if you’re not rushing madly from one utensil to another. And if you know you have some hectic evenings heading your way, make extras on the days you do have time and then have leftovers.
- Keep a stack of recipes on hand. That way, you can plan a week at a time and save yourself a lot of time at the grocery store. Rip recipes from magazines, flip through cookbooks once in a while and write down a few titles and page numbers, or hit a website like allrecipes.com to get dinner ideas. (Allrecipes has a great “Ingredients” feature where you can enter ingredients you do want the dish to have and ones that you want to avoid. Perfect for cooks with limited ingredients on hand or those with allergies!)
- Whenever you’re shopping for groceries, leave a spot in your cart for one new item. Maybe you spot a tropical fruit you’ve never had before, or a vegetable your grandma used to make. Try it! There may be a sign next to the item with serving suggestions; if you’re in a produce-oriented market, chances are the grocers can help you figure out how to prepare it. The Joy of Cooking is another good source of food-prep information. And as for spices and herbs, serving suggestions are often given right on their labels.
Happy cooking!
Print This Post
Tags: cooking, enjoyment, fun, kitchen time
you could call this a “dinner dance”…….