A while back I wrote a piece with some tips and tricks for friend of mine who’s rocking it out over @thegracefulathlete. We talked about things like focusing on just a few days instead of a week’s worth of meal plans, embracing prep time, and some small kitchen stress relief techniques.

I’d like to further some of those concepts now, to continue our “re-tooling” of how we approach cooking in the new pandemic universe; where things may not be available (I couldn’t find toilet bowl cleaner the other day) as companies aren’t producing as much, product quality might be lower forcing us to switch to other options, or btw has anyone noticed it’s just more expensive to go shopping these days?

Since none of us are made of money, we need to maximize what we can. Below are a few ideas to help shift our kitchen thinking further to achieve that, but before we get to them I want to mention that these ideas aren’t just pandemic-specific; they’ll help regardless of the times. These are concepts used in professional kitchens, and are adapted here for home use.

What are you building your meal around? In the States we tend to be very protein-centric. We almost always start meal-planning around the meat, and then tack on items to accompany it like fleeting afterthoughts.*

However, that’s not a super cost-effective way to build a meal as proteins are more expensive, both monetarily and calorically. Necessary? From a nutritional standpoint, yes, but we tend to eat WAY more, sometimes up to two or three times more, protein than our bodies need– oftentimes in each sitting!

The solution here is to build your meal around what you need to use and go from there. Look in the fridge. Cabbage need to be used? Build a meal starting with that. Think, how do I like to eat cabbage? Look up a few recipes for cabbage, even go outside your comfort zone if that’s relaxing for you, and then build from there.

The point is, you save the most money by using everything you’ve spent your money on. It sounds obvious, but when we approach meal planning from a protein-centric view, fruits and veggies tend to go by the wayside and we find them schmooked to the back of our fridges two weeks later (and they’re not super cheap these days either, so it hurts my heart when that happens).

Professional kitchens use a “first in-first out” method, meaning whatever went in your fridge first is the oldest and needs to be used first– which for us translates to planning meals and snack around those items.

Transform foods. So maybe you didn’t first out your first in, and now it’s still good but miiiight not be the best in it’s original form. Transform it!

I’ve found lately that strawberries go very fast on me, but before they do they will get slightly seedy on the outside. My daughter loves strawberries, but I know that seedy texture will be a no-go, so I make smoothies from the berries that are still usable but might not be ideal in their whole form.

The take-away here: Before you pitch it, see if you can transform it.

Cauliflower have some of those brown spots on the outside? No prob! Just shave them off, cut the rest up, roast it, and then use a banger to make cauliflower rice! (That process can be broken into multiple days too) Add to anything. Delish. Conversely, you could steam it and whip it into potatoes. Either way it gets used! PS- stores do this too when they offer “store-made” chopped up cauliflower or riced cauliflower for your convenience… most of the time those items are just veggies they could no longer sell in their whole form.

If you can combine these two concepts, planning meals around what needs to be used first and transforming items on the edge into a usable form, you will be able to use virtually everything in your fridge most weeks.

At first it will take a little more brain power, you won’t always nail everything. But like a good workout program, after a little bit it will start to become second nature, and your pocketbook will stay fuller (not to mention a satisfied tummy).

Two-fers. The last thing I’d like to tie in here is the idea of two-fers, which basically means extending something you used for one meal into another.

Good example. Yesterday I made this seriously bomb chicken salad from Epicurious (when I need recipe help I love pulling from Epi because they pull from multiple sources every month, so it’s easy one-stop shopping).

I was going to send this salad recipe to some friends of mine since I loved it SO much, and then I realized I’d have to caveat too many things– I had used the now-deboned chicken I had in the fridge from making chicken broth (using a whole chicken*) the day before, amongst other things I’d also already had and needed to use… ironically some cabbage, which was stellar when added to the recipe. Sound familiar? 😀

In short, I was able to get 6 quarts (a quart is the standard box stock size you find at the store) of chicken broth and essentially “free” cooked chicken for my salad and a lunch for my kiddo, for the cost of a whole chicken and some veggies.*

So this is what I mean by two-fers. The more two-fers you can add to your kitchen experience, the higher your savings will be. This isn’t really a new concept, many recipes have “next day use” sections- however I’d say don’t get locked into those uses and try to apply that thinking to anything you’re making and have left over.

The bonus here is that you don’t have to have a next day usage plan for things when you make them, because if you’re planning meals around what needs to get used and transforming things that need to get used, you will find that two-fers start to emerge as a natural byproduct. This, for me, is relaxing, because I then don’t feel locked into using leftovers a certain way (and then not eating them because I don’t feel like that thing).

I’ve referenced it before, but we have a sign in our kitchen that reads, “There’s Always Chinese.” It means to not sweat it, and that if we try new things in the kitchen and they don’t work out the world won’t end. As our society has evolved, recipes have became more detailed down to the ninth degree, because cooking knowledge hasn’t been passed down to the next generations.

One of the challenges of this evolution is that that level of detail tends to lock us into a recipe instead of encouraging us to think outside the box, which in-turn leads to food waste.

I encourage everyone to change our view of what recipes are– to use them instead merely as guidelines and then incorporate some of the techniques above to finish a meal. Not only will our pocketbooks thank us, but it’s just pretty damn fulfilling as well.

*Now here I will say vegetarians are pretty good at breaking this mindset as most vegetarian proteins come in smaller forms that are added into things, like beans- so kudos!

*The trick to using chicken for both broth and other items is to pull the chicken from the cooking liquid just when it’s done so it’s still tender and flavorful, whip it off the bone real quick, and then throw the bones back in the pot to finish the broth. You paid for the bones, so use them! Reserve chicken for other use.

*If you want to do quick math, most store stocks are 2-3 bucks (at the low end) all the way up to 6-7 dollars each quart. My chicken cost $13, add $2 for cost of veg I used, and I made six quarts of stock for $15, so $2.50 each. I then however got to use the chicken in two additional dishes (including my salad), and make soup out of the broth (which also used some of the chicken). It sounds great, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is always a cost, and in this case it’s time. While making a broth is literally just throwing a chicken and veggies into a pot, cooking, and straining/storing, it does take more time than purchasing it and that must be respected. This is where we have to prioritize time vs. cost savings… sometime time wins, sometimes our checkbooks do.

Either way, knowledge is power.