{make ahead mom} - fish tacos

I don't consider fish tacos terribly labor intensive or time consuming. But they do typically require a little advanced planning to ensure everything's on hand when the dinner bell chimes. That is, unless, you are forever referring to yourself as the Make Ahead Mom... in which case you look for ways to make quick and easy meals, even quicker and easier. 

Before we left for church this morning, I started the prep for Sunday lunch. I had purchased a beautiful grass-fed beef roast from EarthFare and couldn't wait to get it in the oven. As I'm sure you can imagine if you've ever purchased really high-quality, grass-fed beef, this roast was no "economy purchase." But I'm a big believer in paying farmers a fair price. They feed this country. Period. And they deserve to be paid for their work.

High quality meat deserves a high quality price tag, IMO.

And frankly, it makes me all the more aware of eating only a modest portion and saving the rest for another use... and no waste. I think if we all had to grow our own livestock for every roast, taco & hamburger we'd all be a little more mindful of what's going on the plate & in the garbage. But that's a discussion for another day.

Anyway, after browning off the roast before popping in the oven, I pan sauteed in the same pan some previously frozen fish that I had thawed overnight (Make Ahead Mom hates extra dirty dishes). While fresh fish is of course always best, I'm the Make Ahead Mom and some days, that's how I roll. 

I popped the cooked fish in the 'fridge, headed to church and let the rest of day unfold. After a nice freak-out session outside of Williams-Sonoma where I realized son #2 had dropped my keys and they were NO WHERE TO BE FOUND, the day unfolded into terror, blazing heat & finally intense relief when the WS gals talked to their neighbors at Banana Republic, who had my keys. 

I rushed home to make the last preparations for dinner. Thank you pre-cooked fish. I diced a peach, an avocado and a mango, who were just a day or so before being past their prime, added some fresh cilantro from our budding garden, added a squeeze of fresh lime juice, olive oil, cumin and salt & pepper. And because I AM the Make Ahead Mom and always let my freezer do double duty, I grabbed the remainder of a can of rinsed black beans I had frozen previously & 1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce. I gave them a quick whirl through the micro to thaw & done - Fish Tacos with Avocado, Mango, Peach & Black Bean Salsa. 

Two lessons to be learned here:

-Fresh taste can happen even with the use of some not-as-fresh ingredients (thank you freezer)

-Never, ever let a 17 month old hold your keys no matter how entertaining he finds them

Question - what are your favorite "get ahead ingredients?" Those foods you always have on hand in the pantry or freezer that make dinner a snap? 

make ahead mom - let's not overlook lunch

 

Most of what I have detailed in recent weeks relates to dinner, or in the case of Perfect Pancakes - breakfast. But as a work-from-home mom, I often find myself in need of a quick, satisfying lunch that's as easy to prepare as the dinner that follows. 

That in mind, I've come to appreciate that there are a few foods that answer the lunch bell's call almost without fail. Baked potatoes are like a diamond - they are forever... okay, so maybe that's pushing it... but if you don't overcook them in the oven, they really can hang out for a while (in the 'fridge of course) and keep their quality quite nicely. 

My go-to quick-and-easy lunch of late is to re-warm a baked potato in the microwave and pack it with a mighty helping of the roasted veggies for that week. A little bit of butter (yeah, I said butter... let's be real ... a baked potato begs for the best) and a sprinkling of some high quality cheese, and you're in business. 

The funny thing is that when I go out to lunch with my husband, he often questions the nutrition credibility of ordering a baked potato. First, know that he is not an RD, but he definitely fancies himself nutrition-minded. Likely, his concern is based in things he's "heard" about potatoes... i.e. "they make you fat." 

Really? Aren't we beyond that single food evil notion?

Apparently not.

So let me clarify.

Eating too many calories and being sedentary lead to calorie imbalance. Calorie imbalance lead to weight gain. Period.

It should be noted, however, that calorie imbalance as a function of the type of calories is more relevant now than ever. Research to evaluate whether "healthy" foods actually prompt your body to burn more energy is ongoing. Janet Helm recently discussed this with Cooking Light. Be sure to check it out. It's exciting research for those of us who consistently promote eating less-processed foods as your primary source of calories. But for the purposes of explaining to my husband and anyone else who listen that baked potatoes are fine for lunch, the simple calorie equation will do for now.  

Anyway, I'll concur that the humble baked potato is not likely to top the list of nutritional powerhouse foods any time soon. But they are a good source of vitamin C  and fiber, and frankly, they just taste damn good to me. They provide a wonderful vehicle to transport other nutritious foods into a hearty and satisfying lunch and are always on-hand at the Make Ahead Mom's house.

So, what is your go-to quick and easy lunch? 

~Regan

make ahead mom - orange-beef and roasted red bell pepper wrap

 

I won’t bore anyone with the details, but this family is quite busy preparing itself for an extensive undertaking for spring break next week.

Enough said. 

We all go through the same at some point: before a big trip out of town, before a big party at our house or just simply at the end of a long week. My solution - make ahead. 

Tonight’s menu was composed of 100% make ahead and/or fresh from the freezer ingredients: 

Orange-Beef and Roasted Red Pepper Wraps 

and

Steam-in-the-bag edamame (truly one of my most favorite healthy food finds) 

I made the wraps from a combo of “get ahead ingredients”: 

Grilled flank steak (weekend)

Roasted onions (weekend)

Roasted red peppers (freezer) 

Sauce (combo of keep it on hand ingredients)

Tortillas (always on hand as well) 

Edamame (we buy these by the mega pack at our local club store) 

*The only thing I would add for next time... a little crushed red pepper in the sauce, or better yet, some Sriracha, would really set off the sweet citrus of the orange and hoisin. Definitely next time. 

All in all, though, couldn’t be easier and so much better than take out, honestly. 

What did you make ahead in advance for a night just like tonight? 

Make Ahead Mom Meets Leftover-Hating Dad

 

This is no love story. 

In fact, my husband hates leftovers. 

It used to mean a lot of food got filed away in the trash... a concept I, in turn, hate. And no time has that been truer than now. Why?

1. Our food bill has increased with the addition of children
2. Have you checked your grocery receipt lately? 

Over the years, I have certainly developed a strategy to use many foods in a second-serving manner - the cornerstone of Make Ahead Mom has to be the leftover chicken breast, no?  

But one food I have always struggled with is the hamburger. 

I’m not a big burger eat... a good home grilled version every now and again is fine, but it’s not my go-to if I’m cooking.  

My husband, however, has this new, super special grill that has sparked within him a new interest in grilling (...and the angels rejoice! I’m frankly thrilled to have the food prep help.)

His repertoire is increasing, but burgers certainly fall into the category of go-to meals. Lucky for me, they showed up on the menu this week at his hands (angels continue rejoicing! After traveling most of last week, help in the kitchen is always welcome.) 

The problem - What to do with the leftover patties? Day old burgers are a natural choice for most people. Now, please go back and read the first sentence of this post. 

I decided to put the recipe community via the WWW to the test. The overwhelming consensus: crumble into a spaghetti sauce. 

Okay... I’ll bite. 

What I ended up with was a surprisingly good variation on spaghetti sauce. Nothing fancy. Not what you’re going to serve at your next dinner party. But a second call for burgers that would’ve otherwise ended up discarded. Would a traditional bolognese have been better? Most likely. But for a quick-and-easy (and frugal) dinner on a Wednesday night, it was pretty darn good. 

This wasn’t a complete “make ahead” meal, but my freezer did come to the rescue, sprucing things up a bit & making it an even quicker option:

Meat - These were very lean patties. The consensus was to crumble into a sauce. I actually cubed them. Texture wise the crumbled may have been better, but this worked. It was sorta like a square meatball. (Did I just say that?) I placed in a small pan, topped with sauce, doctored a little and let simmer. 

Sauce - The base of the sauce was a very simple marinara variation I made a month or so ago (and popped into individual servings in the freezer) using 1 can tomato sauce, 1 can diced tomatoes and a little refrigerated pesto. You would NOT believe how simple this is. It’s like instant marinara. Nutritionally, the best choice would be to look for no-salt-added tomatoes.   

Extras - I keep a stack of roasted red bell pepper quarters in my freezer at all times now. I stack between sheets of deli paper coated with cooking spray, for easy removal. Roasted bells can be cubed even when frozen, no need to thaw. Roasting yourself and freezing is less expensive than buying from the jar and eliminates the extra salt of the jarred version (which are admittedly quite good in a pinch.) 

I also “doctored” the overall sauce a little with a few kalamata olives, and when it was all served, added a few fresh curls of high quality, dry aged cheese. My friends at Cabot Creamery clearly have my favorite with their Clothbound Cheddar. If you’ve never tried it, please look for it. It’s unlike any “cheddar” you’ve ever tasted. If you aren’t lucky enough to snag some, a true Parmesan or good high quality domestic variation will do just fine. 

Pasta - I used up the last of my pre-cooked pasta a week earlier. So rather than cooking just enough for last night’s dinner, I cooked an entire package of whole wheat spaghetti. I portioned the rest in freezer bags and popped into the freezer for a future meal. <--- But that’s a story for another day. 

Make Ahead Mom - Stacking The Deck in Your Favor

Sometimes, the idea of what to make ahead is obvious - Curried Chicken from earlier this week, for instance. 

Sometimes, it’s more about seizing the make ahead moments with foods you are already set to cook in your kitchen. The challenge (or opportunity) is to dissect all the make ahead moments that exist within a given recipe. 

Take my Perfect Pancakes. 

A fairly easy, straightforward pancake recipe, these don’t “really” take a ton of time to make. But as any busy mom (redundant, perhaps) can attest to, finding even small bursts of dedicated cooking time can be a challenge.

That’s why I have taken an easy on-the-griddle a.m. option and turned it into one of my make ahead standbys. I do it in two ways: 

Make Ahead Method

Part 1

Stir together dry ingredients in a bowl the night before. Either cover with plastic wrap or pop the bowl into an empty, cold oven (my secret off the counter, out of the way hiding place). 

Whisk together wet ingredients, cover and in the fridge it goes. 

Put the griddle right on the stove with your spatula near by. 

[This may all seem oversimplified, but the reality is that these simple steps are what makes the difference between actually “cooking” pancakes in the morning vs simply opting for a bowl of oatmeal.]

Part 2

Invariably there are always pancakes left over. At our last home, we used to walk to the lake periodically and allow the community resident ducks to join our feast. But we are duck-less these days, and I have wised to the fact that leftover pancakes can find a perfect home in my freezer. 

People recommend a number of different ways to freeze leftover pancakes. My favorite is to stack them between sheets of deli paper, place in a zip-top and pop in the freezer. 

By stacking between deli paper, they can easily be taken one-by-one from the freezer and either warmed in the microwave or toasted in a toaster oven.

In either respect, the advance prep is certainly stacking the odds for a worry free meal in your favor. 

Make Ahead Mom - on the move

First... the picture to the right has nothing to do with today's post. I just thought it was a super cool wine opener found in the collection of many, many openers at the CIA. 'Course at second glance, maybe it could be some sort of visual metaphor for a woman in movement, like the title... but really, it's just cool. 

On to the post.... 

Perhaps it did not make a lot of sense to intro my new feature of the Make Ahead Mom during a week I left for a business trip. I wanted to be able to detail what wonderful get-ahead ingredients I worked on this weekend. The reality is that I enjoyed a healthy cooking conference in Napa Valley (poor me, right?). It was, however, completely filled with discussions about the need to plan menus and cook ahead in order to eat more healthfully. Score one for the Make Ahead Mom.  

Anyway, I am returning inspired to not only explore new tastes & flavor combinations, but more importantly find ways to cook them in advance. You know... mise en place, Make Ahead Mom style. 

The good news is that I left behind a freezer stash of foods that have already been prepped and will be ready for the warm-up when I get in this evening. I didn’t really have this particular day in mind when I cooked them, but that, my friends, is the beauty of the system. It's ready whenever you need it. 

Curried Chicken (or Chickpeas) in Coconut-Peanut Sauce is an extremely simplified adaptation of Chicken Curry. I was first introduced to this version’s simplicity when I worked at Weight Watchers Magazine. The version we tested was vegetarian, featuring chickpeas/garbanzo beans, but over the years I have adapted it. I don’t pretend to suppose that this is an authentic Thai recipe. But it’s easy. It’s economical. And it tastes great.

Make Ahead Method

• Make sauce doubling recipe, minus the addition of chickpeas or chicken
• After sauce cools, spoon individual servings into zip-top plastic freezer bags
• Seal bag, pressing as much air out as possible
• Lay bags flat and stack in a square baking dish/pan (Try to use a dish about the same size as your bags when they are laid flat. It helps keep them from sliding around in the freezer)
• After sauce freezes, remove bags from baking dish and stack in freezer
• Do the same method with a batches of rice, laying bags flat before freezing** 

**Taking the time to lay the bags flat for freezing is important because it

1. helps keep things organized in your freezer 
2. makes the most of your freezer space 
3. aids in thawing (referenced below) by exposing more surface area

When I’m ready to make dinner, I “pull” previously roasted and frozen chicken from one large breast (I usually thaw by placing in the ‘fridge the night before. It may sound like advanced planning & strategy, but it’s really more like “Well, I guess we’ll have chicken tomorrow night” and then I go from there. You could also substitute drained, canned chickpeas for the chicken as the original version did if your chicken reserves are empty.) 

I place a bag of sauce and a bag of rice in a bowl of warm water while I pull the chicken. “Pulling” chicken is super quick and ultimately a great task for a child to help with. Just be sure they have clean hands & maybe opt for plastic forks, depending on the age of the child. The good thing about pulled chicken - it’s free-form, no need to use knives and it’s very forgiving, in terms of shape and size. 

How you assemble at this point is really up to you. Honestly, I believe microwaves are meant for more than just popcorn, so I put mine to good use. I assemble each plate with the cold, just thawed ingredients and then warm accordingly. You could very easily place the sauce & chicken in a small pot to simmer over low and then warm the rice in a similar fashion. 

I say why bother? 

More dishes = more work = less time with my kids after a long week of traveling. I may love my time in the kitchen, but I love my time with my kids more.

...and with that, dinner is served. 

Getting Ahead in the Kitchen

These little guys... 

...they are the reason that I officially announce March as the month of the “Make Ahead Mom.” It’s my new job. My new title. I guess I’ll call it my month, too. As one well-traveled RD in my professional community likes to say, it’s all about #MeFirst. I guess today’s my #MeFirst moment. Being mom to the ones shown above, I don’t usually have many of those - what mom does? But I digress....    

Anyway, becoming the Make Ahead Mom is not really the kind of job you sign up for... frankly, I was pretty happy with my job as “Make Dinner On The Fly At Five” mom.  

But now that we have added #2 to our flock and as #1 has gotten older, life is requiring a different approach. As innocent and peaceful as they may appear above, sometimes an image does not tell the full story (no matter how many words it is worth.)

These are busy little men with tummies that start rumbling every afternoon around 4 o’clock and even busier bodies that start knocking around the walls of my kitchen simultaneously. What used to be my unwind-over-a-simmering-sauce time has, in recent months, turned into a cacophony of laughter and crying, begging and bartering and general abandonment of organization during the evening hour.  

Enter my friend Robin Plotkin.  

Robin, a fellow RD, blogger and popular food commentator, jolted me into a new system of approaching daily meals with her regular conversations about what she was making ahead in her kitchen. I had always viewed “make ahead” as something only suitable for an entire dish (which often sounds heavy on advance prep time that I just don’t feel like I have). 

But what Robin taught me (sometimes I need a little hand holding, I guess) was that it didn’t have to be that complicated. You just get all your “stuff” ready for the week, so that assembling dinner in the coming days no longer feels like you’re juggling fire batons (And if you’ve ever cooked on a gas stove with a baby on one hip and a preschooler pretending he is a karate champion on the other side, you get the picture.) 

To read more about my introduction into this world of making ahead, as well as a few tips to get started, please see my post today on My Recipes. In the coming months, I will share more about getting ahead in the kitchen, so that you can get on with your life.