5 Ways To Stretch a Meal and Save Money

April 20, 2017 By Jessica Braider 2 Comments

My oldest son is turning nine (!!) this week and over the past couple of months my husband and I have started to notice a pattern: sometimes there isn’t enough food on the dinner table. We haven’t yet reached the run-to-the-fridge-to-scrounge-up-more-food levels yet, but we have definitely hit the oh-no-there-won’t-be-enough-leftovers-for-lunch-tomorrow levels. The amount that I have been making over the past few years (which, by the way, is definitely enough food for a family of four, plus leftovers) is just not cutting it, especially on soccer practice days. Just yesterday, for example, I made 13 baked chimichangas and then had to dash out before dinner to get to a meeting. When I got home, there were only three left. Not only had the three of them eaten 10 chimichangas, but they weren’t even sure how it had happened! Where did all that food go?! I knew this time would come, what with having two boys and my husband coming from a long line of big eaters, but I did not expect it to arrive when my kids were six and eight (what is it going to be like when they are 12 and 14?!).

Because of this uptick in food consumption I have definitely noticed that our grocery bills have started to creep up a bit and so I am starting to be even more diligent about using some of the techniques I saw my mom put into place when I was growing up. My mom is a serious pro at these things. Family friends always talk about how amazing it was to watch my mom feed huge groups of people with what appeared to be very little food. So whether you are just trying to cut down on your food bills, you are hoping to save up for a summer vacation, or you have some other fun plans for a little extra dough, here are some tricks to feed the hoards without breaking the bank:…

3 Ways to Let Go of Stress in the Kitchen: Lessons I Learned When I Became the Cooking Student

March 16, 2017 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Last week I had a humbling and wonderful cooking experience that taught me three important lessons that I wanted to share with you. We had the great treat of welcoming an international student, Jing, into our home for part of her Spring Break. It was wonderful to provide a comfortable (I hope!) home for someone who is so far away from her own and also to have the opportunity to share about our cultures. The best part, for me at least, was the fact that she loves to cook and was eager to teach me how to make some of her favorite comfort foods from her childhood in China. So on Monday we made a field trip to the Chinese grocery store, stocked up on ingredients, and then came home to cook!

For Jing, one of the biggest sources of culture shock when she moved here was meal times when one main dish with perhaps a vegetable side was served. You see, in China there are usually many dishes all served family style. So when we were deciding what to cook together in order to make a traditional Chinese meal, she wanted to make sure that there would be many dishes on the table. In the end we made five dishes: winter melon soup, dumplings, pork and green peppers, eggs and tomatoes, and, of course, rice….

The Recipe Roundup: What I made, what worked, what didn’t

March 2, 2017 By Jessica Braider 4 Comments

As you likely know, more than anything my goal with my business and this blog is to help make cooking accessible. So today I am starting a new feature on the blog that I will offer periodically called: The Recipe Roundup.

With this series I want to give you an honest account of what worked in my kitchen and what didn’t. I’ll share ways that I simplified recipes, ways I adjusted them, how easy or hard I thought they were, and, most importantly, how they turned out. My hope is that this series will show some of the practical tricks you can use to simplify and modify recipes but that it will also exemplify how flexible, creative, and fun cooking can be, even when things don’t turn out as planned…

So without further ado, here’s my first installment of The Recipe Roundup…

2016 Holiday Gift Guide

December 1, 2016 By Jessica Braider 2 Comments

As you know, my goal is to help to make cooking more approachable, manageable, and, hopefully, enjoyable. I want to help to make cooking a natural and stress-free part of your daily life. So when I put my holiday gift guide together each year I am not thinking about the coolest gadgets or the hottest new cooking tool, instead I want to help you find the best, hopefully affordable, kitchen supplies that will help to turn your kitchen into a place you enjoy, a place where you want to spend at least a little time, a place where delicious things are made. So this year I am sharing the tools that I couldn’t live without, tools that have made my cooking life happier and more productive. So add these ideas to your own wishlist or get them for someone you love and then enjoy delicious meals for years to come!…

Bare Minimum Cooking: 3 Tricks for Easy Meals During Busy Times

September 15, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Over the past few days I have been having a lot of conversations with people about how overwhelmed they are feeling. I have come to think that for many of us September is a month of unexpected overwhelm. Here’s my best guess as to why September can be so brutal: for many of us September is a time of transition—a new school year, work commitments start up after summertime lulls, and other communities we are involved with start to kick into high gear with fall activities—and then there are all those pesky things that need to be taken care off that we put off over the summer, or maybe that is just me. So suddenly we find ourselves trying to get into new routines, take care of long lists of things that really should have been done months ago, and snap out of the slower pace of summer. It can be rough and oftentimes something has got to give… and for a lot of people that something is cooking.

But what if you don’t want cooking to be the thing that drops? What if you are working to get into a good routine with cooking so that you can eat healthier, save money, expose your kids to foods other than grilled cheese and macaroni and cheese, etc? Then it is time to do the bare minimum.

Many of you know that one of my main goals is to help people to realize how accessible and simple cooking can truly be. I firmly believe that even in the busiest of times, cooking is possible and worthwhile. So how to you keep cooking as a regular part of your routine when things are so crazy?…

Cooking 101: Measuring Ingredients

July 28, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

I want to start this post with one of the funniest cooking stories I have ever heard. One night a friend of mine and her husband, who were not very experienced cooks, decided that they wanted to cook a really special meal. So they went through all of their cookbooks, found the recipe they wanted to make, wrote down all of the ingredients, and set off for Whole Foods. It took them a while to find all of the ingredients, going up and down every aisle multiple times, and in the end there was still one ingredient that they just couldn’t find anywhere. They looked in the spice section, the dairy section, everywhere. Finally they went to customer service and asked where the “minus” (which they pronounced “meenus”) could be found. The man behind the desk had no idea what “minus” was, so he looked it up on the computer with no luck. They were irate. Here they were, trying to cook, trying to make a nice meal, they had come all the way to the “fancy” grocery store only to find it didn’t carry an essential ingredient?! Unacceptable! Finally they decided to just try the recipe without the “minus” since they only needed two tablespoons of it anyway. As they left Whole Foods with their groceries, though, they were still grumbling about what kind of grocery store doesn’t have an ingredient like “minus”?! When they got home and looked at the recipe again they realized that the recipe had called for “1 cup of flour, minus 2 tablespoons” but it just so happened that the “minus 2 tablespoons” was on the next line in the ingredient list.

When I heard this story I couldn’t stop laughing, but I also realized that this was an amazing example of how confused and flustered we can feel when we are looking at a new recipe, especially a relatively complicated one. For a lot of cooking, I find that measurements can be relatively approximate, but when we are trying a new recipe or if we are relatively new to cooking, having things be precise can be reassuring and helpful so I wanted to share some tips on measuring and also some equivalencies that can be really helpful to know for those times when you run out of clean measuring cups and spoons….

Cooking 101: Heat Levels and Cooking Speed

June 30, 2016 By Jessica Braider 29 Comments

For our second installment of the Cooking 101 series one reader asked that I talk a bit about heat levels on the stove and cooking speed. She said that she has always wondered what the different levels mean and how to know if you are doing it right.

So let’s dig in!

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6 Ways to Kick-Start Your Cooking

March 24, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

Spring is a time of rebirth, rejuvenation, and fresh starts! It is a time of shaking off the old and starting with the new. For me, it has always been a more logical time than new years to start new habits—I have more energy and more enthusiasm as the days get brighter and longer. This is the time of year when I tend to empty out my closets, purge toys, and start getting inspired to make new dishes (I love spring produce!).

If you are itching to get some new, healthier habits started this spring, then what better way than starting to cook more? Home cooking has been shown to be better for your health, your waistline, and your wallet! So to help you get started I’ve come up with 6 ways to kick-start your cooking this spring:…

Easing the Burden of Cooking in 5 Simple Steps

January 14, 2016 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

It’s true. Cooking can feel like a burden sometimes. It can feel like yet another thing that has to get done in the day, another obligation, another chore. And yet we also all know that eating home-cooked foods is better for our health, our wallet, and our emotional well-being. So how do we reconcile these two competing realities? How do we find a way to make it less of a chore and even more enjoyable?

There are things we can do to change the environment while we are cooking such as cooking with someone, playing fun music, or having a glass of wine. But there are also some simple steps you can take to make the actual cooking easier. They will save you time, which will, in turn, make the whole process feel less burdensome….

The Mindfulness of Cooking

September 17, 2015 By Jessica Braider Leave a Comment

I have been talking to a lot of people recently who find cooking to be a chore, a bore, a burden. People feel overwhelmed by the prospect of having to make dinner. I get it, I really do!

But recently I suddenly had this epiphany about cooking that has really changed the way I look at my time in the kitchen. Now I will acknowledge that I really enjoy cooking. I like the creativity it provides in my life. I like the ritual. But recently I also realized that one of the things that calls me back to the kitchen over and over again is the mindfulness of cooking. And this is something that I think can be true for people who like to cook and also those who struggle with it.

Cooking requires mindful attention. If you let your mind wander to your to do list, your worries, your fears, your anxieties, you are much more likely to hurt yourself (as I did yesterday when I was rushing through my to do list in my head and cut myself). Cooking requires you to focus in on what you are doing. It asks that you put other things aside. It compels you to be present in that moment. For someone like me who struggles a lot with meditation and getting my mind to slow down, I have come to look upon my time in the kitchen as a respite.

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The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.