by Sam Tackeff | Jan 16, 2017 | Challenge, Lists
Well yes, it’s that time of year again! I’ve spent the better part of the weekend taking stock of my kitchen resolutions – really, the only resolutions I make each year!
Some of my 2016 and previous years’ kitchen resolutions included:
:: to use my large/fancy appliances more often (done!)
:: to do a weekly assessment of fresh produce in my refrigerator (done, and was significantly less wasteful!)
:: to cull the pantry (did a decent fridge cull, pantry is still overwhelmed)
:: to take better care of my cast iron (nope, yikes!)
:: to not use the wrong lid on the wrong pot (learned my lesson and stuck with it)
:: to not season directly into the pan (took this one to heart!)
:: to read my new cookbooks cover to cover before buying several more (fail)
:: to wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night (mostly)
:: to keep a running kitchen journal (for the most part, electronically this year)
In 2017, I’m doing things a little differently. My word of the year is share, and so this year I’m focusing my kitchen activities on content creation. I thought it would be a good year to get a head-start on two of my cookbooks that I’d like to write. I’ve had these bubbling for the past decade, and thought that it’s a good time as any to get crackin’.
This year I’d like to write two cookbook proposals – one for a Turkish cookbook with family recipes and a love letter to Istanbul, and another for an everyday eating cookbook, in the style of Nigel Slater, Anna Jones, or the Leon cookbook.
Create two seasonal healthy cooking e-books – with meal plans to take advantage of the seasonal bounty, fresh produce storage tips, easy dinner ideas, and suggested pantry upgrades.
Continue with my weekly meal planning – I was quite consistent in 2016 writing my meal plans, and I’d like to continue the trend. I’d like to write more about how I go through the process of meal planning, the resources that I use, and how I simplify the process of making weeknight meals.
I’d like to start eating my way through some restaurant bucket list restaurants – as part of an overall goal to start traveling more. Since moving back from California, I can count my exquisite dining experiences on about one hand these days. We’re not talking all Michelin, but really experiencing the work of some notable chefs and global cuisine to continue my lifelong education in food.
Start working my way through at least 100 new fruits and vegetables – and come up with my list of 1000 to try. This is more complicated living in New England, but it occurred to me that I’ve been lacking in novel food experiences lately and need a good place to start. I’m going to be compiling a list by sitting down with Elizabeth Schneider’s Uncommon Fruits & Vegetables, Alice Waters’ fruit and vegetable tomes, Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy, and some of my River Cottage Guides, and researching vegetables and fruits unique to specific global cuisines in some of my regional cuisine specific cookbooks that I already own.
Write out a list of challenging cooking experiments to try, and add in a good weekend cooking project at least once a month. My default in the kitchen is quick weeknight meals, and there are some great projects that I’m missing out on.
A short list of cookbooks that I already own and love that I’d like to re-read and cook a recipe from this year:
January – 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer
February – Zuni Cafe by Judy Rodgers
March – The Nordic Cookbook by Magnus Nilsson
April – French Feasts by Stéphane Reynaud
May – The Italian Baker by Carol Field
June – Into the Vietnamese Kitchen by Andrea Nguyen
July – Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce
August – Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin
September – The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen by Paula Wolfert
October – My New Orleans by John Besh
November – Japanese Cooking by Shizuo Tsuji
December – Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan
Do you have any kitchen resolutions this year?
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 6, 2016 | Cookware
Julia Child, photographed in her Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen, June 29, 1970. By Arnold Newman/Getty Images.
This is the time of year where I sit down to reflect. While many folks are making resolutions about health and fitness – and I have those year round, I just call them goals – I like to focus on resolutions for my kitchen – my favorite room in the house. It’s a nice practice to remind myself to be more mindful in the space where I prepare our meals, nourish my body, and explore my creativity.
Kitchen Resolutions: 2016
:: I resolve to use my large/fancy appliances more often. This has more to do with my current kitchen space, but my Vitamix, Instant Pot, and Kitchen Aid mixer need more use in 2016. I will say that I’ve used my amazing Breville Tea Pot and my Cuisinart Steam Oven almost daily in the past year though.
:: I will do a weekly assessment of fresh produce in my refrigerator, and do what I can to not let the greens wilt and die before eating them. Or worse, completely desiccate. Although, I did contemplate eating them anyway… fridge-dried kale chips.. how bad can they be?
:: I will cull the pantry. No more hoarding of things that I have no interest in using. No more taking pantry items when people move. On that note, if I inherited something from someone and don’t like it, I will get rid of it and not feel any guilt or shame.
:: Take better care of my cast iron. My mother seasons her cast iron (that I gave her) religiously and it’s beautiful. This is really shameful – my cast iron is currently sitting in the oven and hasn’t been used in a month.
:: I will not use the wrong lid on the wrong pot. I learned my lesson this year when I almost lost my Le Creuset lid to a vicious steam hold on my oversized frying pan. It took several days, the advice of over 20 engineers and 50 Wellesley alums and the collective power of the internet to free it.
:: I will not season directly into the pan. I will take appropriate amounts of seasoning into my hand… and then into the pan. One does not need four tablespoons of chile on one’s eggs.
:: I will read my new cookbooks cover to cover before buying several more. This is actually a newer resolution, because I’ve rarely had this problem before. But somehow several cookbooks came into the house this year that were not read through before getting a spot on the shelf.
From previous years:
:: Wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night. I’m too often guilty of leaving things until the next day. A clean slate makes life infinitely easier in the morning, and I feel even better when I have my coffee mise en place ready to go to avoid confusion during my morning grogginess.
:: Keep a running Kitchen Journal. To keep track of our likes and dislikes as a family, and to pass on perhaps one day as a keepsake.
What are your kitchen resolutions for 2016?
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 1, 2013 | chicken, Pantry Staples, Turkish
Why, hello! Has the first day of this new year treated you well?
Our celebrations were quite low key last night because we’ve both been a little under the weather. We started out with the movie Haywire, but despite my serious strong-girl crush on Gina Carano, the film committed the cardinal sin of bad action films: it was boring. So boring, in fact, that I turned it off after twenty minutes. We salvaged the evening with pizza, ice cream and several episodes of MI-5, and made it (reluctantly) until midnight.
Once we realized that the world wasn’t ending, we passed out and slept in until 10. Glorious!
Today we gathered ourselves and ventured out into the world. Devon needed snow boots, and I hadn’t left the house for a while. We drove to the L.L. Bean outlet, ate lunch at the salad bar at Whole Foods, and came back to work on a few new projects, draft some more resolutions, and think about my word of the year. For dinner, I thought I’d set us straight with some salads and roast chicken.
This is one of my favorite meals because it’s simple, light, and relatively foolproof. Which of course means that I had my first kitchen failure of the year – I started my chicken skin side down in my greased pan, but the skin decided to stick nearly entirely to the pan when I flipped it over. Alas! Good thing that rosemary and oregano infused chicken minus the skin still tastes good!
I topped my salad with some tomatoes, a few baby mozzarella balls, good black olives, and some rolled up slices of pastırma, a Turkish cured meat. I made a dressing with some of the pan drippings, some of the olive oil that I keep my black olives in, and a little bit of sherry vinegar. It was a solid start to the year!
After dinner, I grabbed all of our bones and put them in my little workhorse Crockpot to make a light stock overnight. I’ll probably use it for some soup lunches through the week. Nothing fancy, but you can never have enough chicken-water in the house. Meat tea!
To top it off, we had kazandibi, a sweet Turkish dessert which means “bottom of the pot” and features a lovely layer of caramelization over a rich thickened milk pudding. In Turkey, pudding is by far one of the most popular forms of dessert, and pudding shops are more ubiquitous than pastry shops.
I picked up a few of these at Sevan in Watertown, and since they aren’t the easiest to make well at home, they were a real treat. Traditionally you’d top them with a dusting of cinnamon and maybe some ground pistachios, but since I’m impatient, I ate it cold from the fridge with nothing on it.
After dinner, I set to work making one of my favorite kitchen resolutions happen: wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night. Nothing like waking up in the morning to a clean kitchen and feeling ready to start the day on the right note!
Here’s to a wonderful new year ahead of us!
by Sam Tackeff | Jan 1, 2012 | Kitchen, Lists
Julia Child, photographed in her Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen, June 29, 1970. By Arnold Newman/Getty Images.
I love this photo of Julia, because it reflects a level of organization that I aspire to – a sort of chaotic organization where everything is in plain view and accessible. And we all know that Julia Child got stuff done.
Kitchen Resolutions, 2012:
I keep lists all year long, but January is a nice time to share them because everyone else seems to be sharing theirs, and it makes me feel a little less crazy to have a moleskin filled with thousands of bullet points. Here is my current kitchen list, in no particular order. I call them my “Kitchen Resolutions” because it has a nice ring to it. Some of these I do already, some I’m just starting, and others I’m working towards.
:: Take time each weekend to plan meals for the week. The goal here is to avoid the inevitable laziness that happens when I’m starving and haven’t thought of ideas for a meal. The main benefit is that it saves money and time, and it allows me to actually plan out new things to cook in advance.
:: Stock the larder with home made goodies. Once a month (at least) I like to make a new condiment. I’ve been working lately to put together a “condiment calendar” with ideas for each season.
:: Wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night. I’m too often guilty of leaving things until the next day. A clean slate makes life infinitely easier in the morning, and I feel even better when I have my coffee mise en place ready to go to avoid confusion during my morning grogginess.
:: Keep a running Kitchen Journal. I usually record what I eat in loose notes anyway, but I’d like a more concerted effort to put together a real kitchen diary that I can look at in the future, and maybe even pass on as a keepsake.
:: Take stock of what is in my pantry. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has this ridiculous spreadsheet that I admire immensely. I’m pretty good at itemizing and knowing where things are, particularly with my large cookbook collection, but keeping better track of spices, expiration, etc. is the way to go.
:: Make a list of easy pantry meals. In addition to my meal planning, I’m working to compile a list of easy pantry meals to make if I’m really tired, or just don’t want what I’ve planned. Having this list will make things easier, and help me to avoid my standby spaghetti nights.
:: Start more food traditions. I love traditions. Maybe pizza night? Sunday brunch? I haven’t quite figured out one that works best for our household, but I’d love to find something.
:: Sign up for a few cooking classes. I learn a lot out of cookbooks, from cooking shows, videos on the internet, but hands on in the way to go. I’m particularly interested in Thai, Japanese, Filipino and Persian food at the moment.
:: Work on my “Things I’d Like to Cook List”. I’m working on my life list, but this one goes in tandem. So far I’ve been adding just a few things at a time to my Pinterest board.
:: Assess and update kitchen for efficiency. The kitchen needs some more love. I’d like ideally to get some metro shelving, maybe a peg board, and figure out the best layouts to move smoothly in the place.
:: Identify and celebrate my kitchen rituals. David Tanis and Nigel Slater (two of my favorite writers) have written so well about ritual – those little private moments in the kitchen that remind us why we love the place so much. Morning coffee, heating oil to re-cure my cast iron pan, afternoon tea, frying eggs, using my Microplane to zest, and making oats are some of my favorites, but I always love discovering new ones.
What are your kitchen resolutions? Do you keep a list?
