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What’s cooking? is a question I’ve heard a lot of over the years.
I’ve always cooked a lot for my family growing up. But the day I got married, I not only took a new last name and role as “wife”,  I also became the full time chef in our newly established home.
That first year, I spent time learning what kinds of food my husband and our housemates liked best. I tried out new things and made menu plans and shopping lists like a pro. After all, I’d grown up cooking from scratch and feeding four was suppose to be easier than feeding six or eight! In all actuality, it took a more than that whole year to figure out how to cook small enough portions that we could eat in a reasonable time frame. But I loved it.
Lately though, I’ve gotten out of my cooking groove. Somewhere along the way, I stopped planning menus and writing shopping lists and just sort of started cooking on the spur of the moment. Working away from home with two completely opposite schedules threw a big wrench in my little reign as queen and chef in the kitchen.
I was deep into Chef’s burnout when I finally opened Trina Holden’s eBook, Real {Fast} Food, and began to read.
Trina’s book was fabulous. It started out right with what I needed to hear the most: what makes real food, “fast†food isn’t necessarily the ingredients, but the planning ahead. It reminded me of all the reasons why menu planning is the “stitch in time that saves nine†in the kitchen, and why it will make my life and yours so much easier if we will just take the time to do it.Â
Trina not just told me why menu planning would save me time in the long run, but she made menu planning for an entire month sound so easy, with step-by-step instructions on how to make it work. There’s even printable in the back to write on!
She talked about master shopping lists & buying in bulk. She shared tips for cooking extra for later, and saving time with organizing your day so that you spend less time in the kitchen with greater results. She shares simple recipes and tucked in things that gave me some good food for thought about sprouting and soaking grains more regularly.
Trina used Real {Fast} Food as a way to inspire busy housewives like myself with tips for successfully feeding our families well, and having a life outside of our kitchens and away from washing dishes. And that’s exactly how I felt when I got done reading it— truly inspired.
Scott and I are vegetarians, mostly vegan in fact, so not every little detail of Real {Fast} Food applies to the way we eat personally. But the principles of eating healthfully, and as close to the way God created food as possible, and the methods for planning that Trina shared are all things that I could relate to, and use in my own kitchen. There is no pressure whatsoever that one way of eating is the only way to eat. As a vegan-vegetarian, whose dietary choices are often misunderstood, it was refreshing to read another perspective without feeling like the main point of the book was to tell me that I was wrong. Instead, Real {Fast} Food is all about sharing, and encouraging all of us to make better choices for the food we put on our tables whenever possible.
(Watch for a post in the future on how I use the cooking in bulk and other principles that Trina shares to make my Vegetarian and Vegan cooking faster and more simple on a daily basis.)
Planning ahead is a must for every kitchen, no matter what the particulars of your diet and lifestyle are.
If you are looking for inspiration and how-tos for cooking more healthfully, and for feeding your family more real food, you need to read this book.
This book is also available in Kindle Format, you can read it on the go or pour over it in your kitchen. If you have an iPad or smartphone, consider getting the kindle app. It makes it super easy to refer to no matter where you are!
