Trying to expand my cooking repertoire

[Anonymous]

After not really cooking much ever, I am slowly getting into the groove. We eat together as a family on the weekends - either meals at home we prepare or at restaurants - and my DH and I warm up store-bought food or leftovers during the week. Our DCs are young, so have already eaten dinner before we come home from work. This will probably change next year when one starts first and the other starts Pre-K. I want to cook more for those meals. Some will be in advance, but I would like to cook some easy meals as my soon-to-be first grader likes the sous chef role (and is fairly helpful).

Where do folks get ideas? Cooking shows, web, etc? I am interested in both easy meals and mastering some techniques.

Thanks for suggestions!

[Anonymous]

I use www.allrecipes.com if I cannot think of what to make for dinner. You can also get cooking with children cookbook if you want your first grader to be involved. But go simple at first - there is nothing wrong with caesar chicken wrap for dinner (we had that yesterday).

[Anonymous]

We've used the Six O'Clock Scramble cookbook. (Lots of other people love the online subscription service.) Varied, reliably tasty, and easy meals for the family.

[Anonymous]

Real Simple has some really tasty meals that are doable after work and are family friendly, too.

Most nights we do a meat and a vegetable, possibly a starch. Vary the marinade on the meat, usually grill it. Not exciting, but it is dinner and decently healthy.

[Anonymous]

Pre-DD, I loved Cooking Light magazine. I still use some of their recipes (each issue usually had 4-8 super easy recipes toward the end of the mag). Healthy, tasty, and we almost always have leftovers

[Anonymous]

If you're interested in mastering techniques and getting general knowledge about working with certain staple foods and kitchen "gear" I would definitely start watching the food network. I find it inspiring and fun.

You don't have to watch real cooking shows, per se, because although they may give you some ideas they are usually more advanced (but you may enjoy watching anyway). I would start with watching some of the fun competition shows like Chopped. They are much more entertaining to watch but you will also absorb a lot of real info from watching them cook and from the commentators and judges.

The Five Ingredient Fix is a good cooking show too because, as the name implies, the meals are prepared using only 5 ingredients so they are fairly simple.

You might also want to watch Semi Home Made. That show combines store bought items with homemade cooking so its on the easier side. However, I can't stand the host and find her cooking to be very middle America in a bad way (think cream of mushroom soup or ranch dressing being added to everything). But that might be your thing.

Good luck and have fun with it!

[Anonymous]

Kudos, OP. Cooking is such a valuable life skill to pass on to your kids. Since we generally get home from work pretty late, what we try to do is cook a large meal on Sunday night -- that way we have leftovers for a few days. We make lots of soups and stews/braises during the colder months, and grilled vegetables/meats during the warmer months. Mid-week we might make a quick pasta dish or fritatta. I used to get Gourmet magazine (now get Bon Appetit) - I use these for inspiration for the dreaded "what will we eat" dilemma. Epicurious.com is a good resource, too.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thanks everyone for all the great suggestions, including tips on cooking shows. I am from a large family and my mother hated to cook. I certainly understand the drudgery and how hard it must have been for her to feed a lot of mouths on little money. Fortunately, I am under much less pressure and, therefore, want to expand my own skills as well as inculcate good ones for my DCs. We've slowly evolved into cooking a big meal together on Sunday and now want to incorporate one or two additional meals during the week - don't want them to think that they shouldn't cook if it is not going to be gourmet!

Again, thanks for all the suggestions.

[Anonymous]

Everyday Food magazine (from Martha Stewart) has quick, healthy, fairly simple recipes. There's also a PBS show. You can also get the recipes from the Martha Stewart website--there's one for lighter sesame noodles that I like a lot that is simple and easy.

[Anonymous]

I would highly recommend America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Illustrated 30 Minute Cookbook. All of those recipes have been tested and retested. They are fairly simple. ATK also puts out (once a year I think) a 30 minute or Quick cookbook that I've found at Whole Foods in the magazine section. This is a soft-sided magazine like book that contains recipe cards, 4 to a page. I have 3-4 of these books and they are great. I've never made a bad meal from these books. Lots of them are favorites in our house.

[Anonymous]

Check out the Cook's Illustrated magazine. They have equipment reviews in addition to well-tested recipes, like PP mentioned about their other publications. I like that they keep in mind what ingredients a typical family might already have or have easy access to. We had a subscription for a few years, kept all of the copies, and randomly go through to pick some out when we're looking for something to try.

[Anonymous]

We use a ton of Martha Rose Shulman's recipes from the New York Times. They're all really healthy, easy, and mostly vegetarian. My kids LOVE her seared brussels sprouts recipe, believe it or not.

Here's that one: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/health/nutrition/18recipehealth.html?scp=1&sq=brussels%20sprouts&st=cse

And here is a way to browse all of her recipes by main ingredient:

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/series/recipes_for_health/index.html?scp=1&sq=martha%20rose%20schulman&st=cse

[Anonymous]

A lifetime no-cooker who learned to cook for her kid here.

I started with basics, used the Scramble webservice for 6 months, and now I check out cookbooks at the library and pick a recipe or two to try. What I found worked best was to only try one new recipe a week. Once I know we like it, I make a copy and laminate it and put it into a binder. So overtime, instead of a cookbook, I have a binder of recipes that work for us.