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by Cherie Logan
I do the marathon cooking. You've probably heard of it. A woman spends a day shopping, a day cooking and a day exhausted. And then she's free for a month. The hardest part of Marathon Cooking isn't the actual work. It is coming up with enough money to feed a dozen people for a month all at once. Of course you don't spend as much as if you spread it out all month, but still, to have several hundred dollars in hand is a grande accomplishment.
Marathon Cooking means that I take my ground beef and cook it…lots of it. I sometimes cook 20 – 60 pounds at a time and divide it into packages. Of course my older children can cook the ground beef but they prefer to grab a package from the freezer. For my family size, I use 5 cups of ground beef for a casserole or three pounds of uncooked ground beef.
Grating cheese ahead of time is good as well. In our family cheese is a major part of any meal. If I want to be sure to have it when I want it, I need to grate and freeze it in portions.
There is a rule somewhere that says you use 20 % of something 80% of the time. In our home the seasonings used are almost always: Salt, Garlic, Onion powder, Lipton Onion Soup, Regular Yoshida Sauce and for sweets: Cinnamon, lemon and chocolate. If your children have the common ingredients handy they can gain confidence in adjusting a recipe to taste.
Try something different and make Greek Spaghetti. Warn your family that it is NOT Italian Spaghetti. Make it the same but add Cinnamon for a different country’s flavor. I add it to the ground beef whenever I want a little Greek flavor, some of my family likes it and some do not.
The 20% rule applies to your cookbooks. One of the things that helps the older children cook is to learn how to use recipes. If your favorite recipes are spread out in several books the children lose steam just trying to find something interesting. They come to you several times to help them find ideas and before long you are the one cooking. Take your favorite recipes and type them up and place them in protector sheets and into a notebook. When a sheet has been ruined by countless clean-ups or the notebook has become disgusting, simply take the papers out and place them in fresh surroundings. Some books make it easy to cut out the desired pages and put them into the protectors and notebook. Don’t be afraid to cut…or go and photo copy the pages you like. While you are in the process of typing up the recipe, adjust the quantities to suit your family. Type in suggested side dishes or other things like the type of pan to use etc. If it is something you might make ahead and have stored in the freezer you might want to make two copies and have a duplicate separate section just for make-ahead meals or even for those master mix recipes that I keep promising that I’ll try someday.
(Side note: I’ve used this 20% rule and protector sheets/notebook approach on piano music finding that a good portion of music collections are never used while favorites are spread out through them. By duplicating or cutting and putting into my own notebook, it cuts down on piano clutter.)
Easy Lasagna. When I marathon cook I make my children’s favorite dish: Lasagna. If you don’t have those rectangular Tupperware freezer containers that allow you to pop out the frozen dish, then layer your casserole dish with double aluminum and then begin your dish. When finished you freeze. Once frozen you can take the foiled package out of the dish and maintain the use of the baking dish.
Put sauce on the bottom. Add a layer of dry noodles. More Sauce. Filler and cheese. More noodles and sauce. Continue until the casserole is finished. Top with more sauce then cheese. Lots of sauce is important. Freeze as is or let stand several hours before cooking. I’ll make about 8 large dishes of these, it takes 2 for my family. Bake until hot about 1 – ½ hours and then let stand about 15 minutes or it will be runny.
Establish patterns you would like to see followed. For instance, I tell my children they are to have a main dish and 1-2 side dishes. I have to put my foot down sometimes and insist on vegetables. My family nearly always goes for the fruit option instead.
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