If you haven’t worked in a commercial kitchen then you probably haven’t heard of the kitchen hierarchy so I’ll tell you. It goes like this, more or less: dishwasher, prep cook, saucier and salad/garnish cooks (in fancy kitchens), patissier/dessert chef, line cooks (including grill cooks, fry cooks etc.) and head chef. Some kitchens also have intermediary chefs between line cooks and head chef. There is a reason for the hierarchy. You start at the bottom and work your way up because the tasks at the bottom are actually the most important. Get those wrong and the whole kitchen falls apart. Here’s why I’m mentioning this: most home cooks do the dishwashing and every kind of cooking except for prep cook work. It kind of relates to meal prepping but is a little different. You do it on top of regular cooking.
In defense of doing prep cook work: it’s super labor intensive, so not always helpful at home. But if you can manage it, it can save you a lot of money and prevent a lot of food waste. Here’s how: sometimes, as close as possible to when you brought home the food from the store, get in the kitchen, prep it, stuff it into food storage containers and refrigerate or freeze it. Only stuff you and your family enjoy eating. You can probably see how these, for example, would help a lot, because what is already prepared is way more likely to get eaten before it goes bad:
VEGETABLES
Crudites like sliced cucumber, broccoli, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, celery sticks (put this vertically in about an inch of water at the base)
Meal ingredients like diced or thinly sliced sweet onions (in my experience these last a whiiile, like more than a week)
FRUITS
Sliced or diced papaya, mango, pineapple, orange wedges, peaches, stuff like that
Same but sprinkled with lemon or pineapple juice to prevent browning: apple slices, pear slices
Sliced hulled strawberries or just about anything else sprinkled heavily with sugar between each layer to add to cereal, pancakes etc. later
Halved lemons, which you can use by squeezing one over one cupped hand to catch the seeds but let the juice go through, directly onto a salad instead of vinegar, or to add good flavor to steamed vegetables with olive oil or something
MEATS AND SEAFOOD
Chicken, hamburger patties, turkey, etc. cut into parts and portioned into individual servings
FREEZE THIS
Lasts so much longer.
Sliced bread – just toast directly out of the freezer
Bagels – same
Berries, hulled or plain, maybe frozen on several stacked plates in there first so they don’t stick together
Juice, perhaps in ice cube trays or popsicle molds
NOT WORTH FREEZING IF YOU CAN AVOID IT
Butter. Some say it doesn’t affect the flavor, but I think it does, and it lasts a long time in the fridge anyway, if you buy salted. Why wouldn’t you buy salted, anyway?
Pie crust. Ruins the texture
SOME NOTES
You can buy a lot of stuff like this at the grocery store. Pre-prepped things there can be a serious godsend. I’ve also had some luck at coffee shops and donut shops. Fear not the takeout and the portioning/fridging/freezing thereof, as it’s a literal lifesaver if you’re low on mobility, fresh out of surgery or whatever.
Writing down what you will make when can really help, especially if you need to thaw something the day before and you’re just finding out the day of. I practically live out of my day planner. In fact, I’ve made it myself out of several notebooks and find it really helpful for everything. Especially since my memory’s pretty garbage.
MY RECIPE FILES
I like to save these as folders with many sub-folders on my laptop. It’s been extremely handy finding printable recipes for food and other things then squirreling them away in the hoard. How that relates to this is I like to have recipes saved for Leftover Foods (by food), also Make Ahead and Refrigerate, and Make Ahead And Freeze. This really, really helps for any seasonal occasion so I don’t have to wear myself out cooking all the things in like one day. I also use the two rules of computing: backup, and backup. One in the “cloud” aka paid for storage online, and one on a flashdrive. And finally, in the kitchen whenever something really works there’s a plastic index card keeper which contains blank and filled out index cards. While my recipe cools or whatever I write down what worked there. I have to sort that one at some point with a hole punch, and some rings to sort it by appetizers, most commonly used stuff, sides, mains, etc..
New Book of Days 