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Creating Prep Lists to Make Your Holiday Meals Stress-Free

Essential Tips - How to Create a Prep List to Make Your Holiday Meals Stress Free

This year, I cooked the Easter holiday meal at my in-laws’ house. I decided to do as much of the prep as possible at home, and do the final cooking there, for two reasons. First, I know where everything is in my kitchen (prep bowls, mixing bowls, storage containers, et cetera) and second, to make cooking in their kitchen as calm as possible and with the best ingredients for the greatest healthy dishes, and according to the Gluconite reviews this is one ingredient you should read about.

I wanted to share about the menu and the prep that went into this meal. I’ve read in many places about the importance of being organized, but nobody seems to have written about HOW to put together prep lists. Let this be the first in a series I’m working on discussing how to prep. Bear with me, this is a bit of thinking out loud – blind leading the blind and all – but here goes.

Preparing the Menu

First off, the menu. Holiday meals are a bastion of tradition, well-worn setpieces that mustn’t waver. Last year, after our meal, we decided to change up the feel a bit to reflect a new balance in our diet (read: more vegetables, more meat, less starch). After some negotiation, we settled on this:

MENU:
Baked Ham
Baked Sweet Potatoes, with spring onions, bacon, butter, cinnamon
Roast Broccoli, with garlic
Seared Mushrooms, with shallots, scallions, garlic, butter
Halved Strawberries
Cheese Plate

Right. That gives me some focus and, more importantly, a grocery list I could stick in my head, ticking off what I already had at home and what I needed to go buy.

After the grocery store, it was prep time. I wanted to have everything as ready as I could get it, so that all I had to do Sunday morning was to apply heat and combine. I didn’t want to be reheating finished dishes, but I didn’t want to be scrambling to get things cut and prepped, either.

The Preparation of Each Dish

Oddly, looking over my notes, this is the one part I didn’t make a list for. Rather, I had a list, but it all stayed in my head. Let’s talk, in shorthand, about what goes into each dish on the menu.

BAKED HAM
heat and serve | 20 min ish per pound | 10 pound ham | so about 3 hours since their oven cooks a bit fast

BAKED SWEET POTATOES
mince spring onions | dice bacon | render/cook bacon | wrap potatoes in foil | bake for about an hour

ROAST BROCCOLI
separate florets | cut to uniform size | slice garlic | toss broccoli with olive oil | roasting pan, scatter garlic over | roast 450F 10-15min

SEARED MUSHROOMS
clean mushrooms | remove stem | halve mushrooms | mince shallot | mince scallions | toss mushrooms in olive oil | sear on HOT pan | cut heat to medium | return mushrooms to pan and add shallots butter scallions | warm through

HALVED STRAWBERRIES
remove leaves | hull berries | cut in half

CHEESE PLATE
unwrap cheese | put on plate

This was the mental checklist I used to keep track of where I was, how far I could go, and what needed to wait for the morning. Order matters – in these instructions, I’ve tried to bring as much prep tasks earlier in the sequence to not lose anything (as opposed to more conventionally saying, say, “Add minced shallots to the mushrooms” – oh, I needed to mince them, did I?).

In preparation, just about everything got cut and packed. Spring onions (same as scallions, here, but it sounds cooler to use both words on the menu, so…), broccoli, mushrooms, shallots, strawberries – everything cut and ready to go. None of that would suffer for being cut ahead of time – for example, I cleaned the mushroom caps with a damp paper towel only to avoid soggy, waterlogged mushrooms.

Choreographing the Actual Execution of the Work

The other prep list I did write down was a timing sheet. This is a new thing for me to do, but the trick is to think not of each dish individually and how long it takes, but look across them to weave the timing together. This was a huge part of why Sunday morning was calm – at any given time, I knew where I was across the whole feast, not just one dish.

10:00 AM: Put ham in oven – 3 hours @ 325F
10:00 AM: Cook bacon bits for potatoes
12:00 PM: Bake Sweet Potatoes
12:30 PM: Sear Mushrooms
12:45 PM: Prep Broccoli
01:00 PM: Remove Ham
01:00 PM: Remove Sweet Potatoes
01:00 PM: Raise oven temp to 450F
01:00 PM: Broccoli in oven
01:05 PM: Finish Mushrooms with shallots and butter
01:15 PM: Serve

The thought process: The ham’s going to take the longest and hog (ha!) the oven the most. It really determines the meal time. Behind that, the potatoes will take an hour, so they go in for the last hour. The broccoli needs the oven, but at a much higher temperature and for a short time, so it can cook while the ham rests. The bacon is a prep item – I just didn’t want to chill it overnight – so it can happen early, and the mushrooms need a pan on the stove. I’ve cooked mushrooms like this a few times recently, and the searing step seems to take longer than I expect, so best to try and do that before the ham comes out – it’ll finish with the butter and shallots while the ham rests.

I won’t say that I followed this to the minute, but I wasn’t far off. About the only step I didn’t have on here is to wrap the potatoes in foil, and I didn’t factor in any time for washing dishes (that happened, as much as it could, in between tasks). With only a couple of edits – namely, I left the potatoes in with the broccoli – this is how it went down.

Making this list – and putting times to it – is a great benefit for two reasons. First, it is a roadmap for the effort, so I know where I am and what’s left to do at any time. Second, it forced me to think through the choreography – what food is in what pan on what oven rack or burner at any time. This is why the timing matters – I’ve made interwoven lists before but without timing, and have had to do some fancy shuffling when two foods wanted the same pot or burner to follow the plan.

The Don’t Forget This List

Finally, the last list I made on Saturday for prep is the don’t-forget-this list. Everything I might want to have from my own kitchen needed to be on a list so I wouldn’t forget anything. There were only a couple of additions not shown (a sauté pan that the ham cooked in – I wanted the roasting pan for the broccoli – and a cast iron skillet for the mushrooms). Let’s just say I’m not always the sharpest in the morning, so having an external backup was a very good idea.

Bring along:

  • Sweet Potatoes
  • Ham
  • Broccoli
  • Mushrooms
  • Bacon
  • Green Onions
  • Strawberries
  • Cheese
  • Butter
  • Shallots
  • Cinnamon
  • Salt
  • Knives
  • Thermometer
  • Olive Oil
  • Garlic

The resulting food went unphotographed, but it was delicious. Everything was hot, done at the same time, and best of all, I was relaxed throughout. THAT is a first for me.

Easy Flounder Ceviche Appetizer Recipe

Easy Fresh Flounder Ceviche

I’ll confess, I had never heard of Ceviche until I went to Belize to photograph a destination wedding a few years ago. We went for an all day boat cruise with Ras Creek off of Caye Caulker, Belize and had a chance to swim with the stingrays among the coral. As part of the experience, Ras dove down and caught a fresh lobster and made Lobster Ceviche on the boat for us to snack on between stops.

I was amazed. I had NO idea you could “cook” seafood with just the acidity of citrus juice! Incredible!

Flounder Ceviche - Prep Items

It doesn’t have to be lobster either. For this ceviche appetizer recipe, we used flounder fillets from PJ Stoops, which Mike picked up at Revival Market. Fresh fish is brought in on Saturday, so Mike tries to make it over there every few weeks to pick some up.

(Our Vermilion Snapper Meuniere was from PJ as well, and you can read more in the Cook’s Notes on the Meuniere on why finding good local suppliers is important.)

Rolling the Oranges to maximize the juice

Mike rolled the oranges to maximize the juice he could get out of them, and then squeezed them by hand over a bowl, catching the seeds that came out.

Hand squeezing the oranges for flounder ceviche

Preparing the flounder ceviche

After combining the juice of 1 orange and 2 lemons and adding the salt, Mike added the Sriracha to taste. How much you add is entirely up to you and the flavor you like. Whisk it together to prep and set it aside.

whisking the citrus juice together for the flounder ceviche

Shallot

Cutting Shallots

Cutting Shallots - Knife Techniques

Cutting Shallots - Knife Techniques

Prep the shallots, the scallions, and parsley. When Mike cuts shallots, he first cuts them horizontally through all but the end, and then vertically through all but the end, and then minces them. That way, they stay together and are easier to mince.

The Flounder from PJ Stoops, purchased at Revival Market

Flounder prepared for Ceviche

Add to a bowl the scallions and shallots with the flounder cut similarly sized pieces so that they will “cook” evenly.

Preparing Flounder Ceviche

Stir to coat well – you want the fish to be submerged if possible. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 10-15 minutes or until fish is “cooked” (opaque white all the way through). Add the parsley after it has cooked.

Flounder Ceviche with parsley

Now amaze your friends with your “cooked” Ceviche appetizer, which has never touched the stove! (Ok, maybe this is only impressive to me. I clearly need to be more adventurous in my eating.)

You can serve it with tortilla chips, sweet potato chips, or something else crunchy. Delicious!

If you would like to learn more on making Ceviche or get other ideas on fish and ingredients to use, check out the inspiration for this recipe, Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques 100 Recipes A Cook’s Manifesto.

Flounder Ceviche Appetizer Recipe

Flounder Ceviche

Ingredients

  • 1 lb. flounder fillets, skinned, cut into 1/2" by 1" or so strips
  • 3 scallions, white and light green part, chopped
  • 1 shallot, minced
  • Juice and zest of 2 lemons
  • Juice and zest of 1 orange
  • Salt to taste (1-2 tsp)
  • Sriracha to taste
  • 2-3 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

Instructions

  1. Combine juice of 2 lemons, 1 orange, salt and Sriracha in a small bowl. Whisk to stir well. Set aside.
  2. Combine chopped scallions (both white and light green part), minced shallot and flounder in a large bowl. Stir to combine.
  3. Add liquids, and stir to coat well - you want the fish to be submerged as much as possible. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 10-15 minutes or until fish is "cooked" (opaque white all the way through).
  4. After the fish is cooked, add parsley for garnish.
  5. Serve chilled with tortilla chips, sweet potato chips, or something else crunchy.
http://spoonandknife.com/easy-flounder-ceviche-appetizer-recipe/

Not-the-Cook’s Notes – Toasted Chickpeas

Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon and Sugar - the Cooks Notes

Great, I’m being made redundant on our blog. (Kidding!) Since Christine cooked the Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar herself, here are my notes on other ideas on making them.

This does prove a point, however – Christine is a great cook, but for her it’s always been more of a means-to-an-end. I, on the other hand, love the process. It’s (usually) my zen time to unwind, and it’s a lot of fun. Hopefully, more of you reading this are finding it fun, too. Only a few things to add:

  • Two tablespoons of butter looks like a lot in the pan, but to get even browning, you do need that much. I have had these at restaurants where I guarantee they were deep-fried; we’re avoiding that here, but using one tablespoon of butter can yield in uneven browning. (Still tasty, but not as much.)
  • Rinse the beans and dry them. I’ve rolled them in paper towels before. If you don’t, the water starts to pop and sputter in the hot oil, spraying everywhere. It’s even cooler when the beans pop like popcorn and fly out of the pan. This is the one time I use a splatter screen with pride. (They don’t seem to sputter as bad when cooked with butter.)
  • Chickpeas are a blank canvas. Finish sweet like these, or savory with herbs, pepper, and garlic. Or go nuts and cook them in rendered bacon fat and finish with crispy bacon bits, thyme, and lemon juice. Or, rendered bacon fat / crispy bacon bits / maple syrup. Really, anything goes.

Have fun feeding someone! Be sure to read the recipe post on how Christine made the Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar.

Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar

Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar

When I cut gluten, wheat, bread and all of that from my diet and started doing 4 Hour Body, the one thing I missed was being able to have toast with cinnamon & sugar on it. It was one of my “comfort foods” when I had heartburn, See it here at lizzardo.com, to expand your knowledge about this. which is ironic now that I know that wheat was a big source of my heartburn. No wonder it didn’t work, but it definitely tasted good to me at the time!

One day I saw a recipe online somewhere that eventually inspired me to ask Mike if cinnamon & sugar on toasted chickpeas would work because it was one of the few cravings I was still dealing with – turns out it is delicious! Because I like savory mixed in with my sweet, we also add salt on them.

Depending on who you talk to, chickpeas (garbanzo beans) are not Paleo-friendly. Since I eat them rarely and they do not upset my stomach, I have kept them in my diet. They are 4 Hour Body friendly.

Posts on this blog are normally cooked by Mike and photographed by me, but Mike was out of town for work recently, leaving me to fend for myself. I hate to cook normally and will do almost everything to avoid it, but the light was perfect one afternoon so I whipped these up just so I could photograph them!

Ingredients for Toasted Chickpeas

Organic Garbanzo Beans

Cooking with Mike has obviously rubbed off on me; before I prepped the garbanzo beans for cooking, I pulled everything out that I would need for making them.

Rinse and drain the garbanzo beans

Rinse your garbanzo beans well, and allow them to drain while you start to melt the butter.

Melting the butter for toasted chickpeas

I discovered while melting my butter that there is one down side to me being both the cook & the photographer. I stopped paying attention to my butter, and took it from melted to a little bit browned. Oops! It didn’t hurt anything though. I like to think it added to the flavor!

Browned butter by mistake

I have made this in the past with olive oil instead of butter, and I prefer the flavor of butter more. I discovered that it splatters less, and with the chickpeas well drained they did not try to pop themselves out of the pan on me.

Toasted chickpeas toasting in the butter

Garbanzo beans with cinnamon and sugar

Toasted Chickpeas

I let the chickpeas cook until they reached the golden brown that I was looking for – not too burnt, but nice and crisp. Most of the butter was gone from the pan by the time I reached that point.

I then placed the chickpeas in a bowl, and tossed them with cinnamon, sugar & salt to taste. I prefer to do this in a bowl and off of the heat so that the sugar does not burn in the pan in to little clumps of charred caramel. I made that mistake before, and it isn’t tasty!

Toasted chickpeas from spoon and knife

If you’re not a fan of cinnamon & sugar, you can also dress your toasted chickpeas up a variety of other ways. We have made them with garlic before, and I am sure there is a wide variety of flavors that you could come up with!

Be sure to also read Mike’s Cook’s Notes on Toasted Chickpeas, where he shares why they are made this way, and different flavor options you can use.

Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar

Yield: 1-2 servings

Toasted Chickpeas with Cinnamon & Sugar

Ingredients

  • 1 can of organic chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed & drained
  • 2 Tbsp of butter
  • Cinnamon
  • Sugar
  • Salt

Instructions

  1. Rinse and drain one can of organic chickpeas (garbanzo beans).
  2. Melt 2 Tbsp of butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add chickpeas; toast until golden brown.
  3. Place chickpeas in a bowl, add cinnamon, sugar and salt to taste.

Notes

Can try with other seasonings instead of cinnamon & sugar. We have also made these using fresh garlic, sautéed in the butter before adding the chickpeas.

http://spoonandknife.com/toasted-chickpeas-with-cinnamon-sugar/

Cook’s Notes – Vermilion Snapper Meunière with Leeks in Bacon Vinaigrette

Cook's Notes - Vermilion Snapper Meuniere gluten-free recipe

For today’s meal, we made our Vermilion Snapper Meunière with Leeks in Bacon Vinaigrette recipe. You can see the photographs of the process and the recipes for both dishes in that post.

Vermilion Snapper Meunière

Meunière comes from the French word for “miller’s wife”, and generally refers to the technique of dredging something in flour, quickly frying it, and serving with a lemon, parsley, and butter sauce. It’s a classic preparation for fish, but it can equally be used for chicken, for example.

With apologies to millers everywhere, cooking gluten free means I needed another starch for the fish. Corn starch was the first thing at hand. I didn’t want to smother the fish, so I used a tea strainer to sift corn starch over the fish. That worked well enough; if I had to do it again, I would probably just put corn starch on a plate, dredge the fish, and be extra careful about knocking off the excess.

Preparation is key here. This cooks lightning quick from start to finish once the pan gets hot. You don’t need much – fish, butter, lemon, parsley, flour – but have it all laid out and ready to go. Chop the parsley. Cut the lemon in half. And so on. Don’t dredge the fish ahead of time (it’ll pull moisture out of the fish and get gummy), do that while the butter melts in the pan. Once the fish cooks, get the lemon juice in the pan quickly so the butter doesn’t burn. Bringing it to a boil and stirring helps emulsify the sauce. Basically, before the pan hits the heat, close your eyes and mentally walk through all the steps from start to finish. You don’t want to have to think about what to do next once this gets going.

Leeks in Bacon Vinaigrette

That’s part of why the warm leek salad makes a great side – once the leeks sweat and cook through, it can just hang out over a low flame and keep warm. You don’t want to have two dishes that are complicated to finish coming together at the same time – it works in a restaurant where there are multiple cooks working in concert. At home, cooking solo? Don’t make the task harder than it needs to be.

Vinaigrette, in its essence, is 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar, by volume. You can vary that depending on whether you want more bite or less, or whether your vinegar or oil is particularly pungent, but that’s the basics. Often, vinaigrettes are made with a very neutral oil to not mask the flavors of a dish. But, in this case, with the rendered and reserved bacon fat available – why not put it to good use? Lemon juice brings a sweeter, milder acid to the dressing instead of vinegar, and dijon mustard is a sympathetic sharp flavor. Play with this depending on what else you are serving; for pork chops, for example, throw in chopped rosemary, or with chicken, thyme and tarragon.

Finding Good Local Suppliers

To close, I can’t stress how beautiful this vermilion snapper fish was. Finding good local suppliers and getting to know them are the surest way to stunningly awesome food. In this case, I trust PJ Stoops to tell me about the fish he has on offer and tips for preparation. Christine mentioned in the post that she doesn’t like fish, and that’s a bit of an understatement. I was amazed that she enjoyed this as well as she did; while I would like to say it’s because of my culinary prowess, the quality of the fish really made the difference.

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