Ignore Your Next Dinner

In my opinion, cooking is an umbrella term for washing, chopping, dicing, scooping, stirring, frying, steaming, roasting, rinsing, scrubbing, and drying. You can do one, some or all of these and in the end, if you end up with food you’ve been cooking. Sustainable cooking is the work that you do to provide satisfying food in a way that fits into your schedule and matches your budget and priorities. To accomplish that balance, you’ll need to pay a lot more attention to what your life is actually like and probably a lot less attention to what you THINK other people’s wonderful lives are like. Your goal? Get On With It!

Here’s a menu possibility that is specifically designed to host a dinner at the end of a full day. I timed myself, this meal took 7 whole minutes to prepare. I made a point of not rushing.

Whole chicken

Sweet Potatoes & Carrots

Bagged Salad

Remember, you still get credit for cooking no matter how little work you do on the food. So if you don’t have time to cook and you don’t like to cook anyway, this is just for you.

Start with the Sweet Potatoes (or yams if they were on sale).

I like these things better than potatoes for their flavor and color, but you can stick with regular potatoes. After all, it’s your dinner. I slice two or three of them thickly. (1.5-2” thick) and I layer the bottom of my crock pot with those.

The Chicken- Whether you feel strongly about rinsing your chicken or not, I ASSURE you, you can find many well thought out and convincing arguments on both sides. So, do a 1 second gut check. Want to take time to wash your chicken? The choice is yours. I’m not here to judge you.

If you’ve never done this before, you’ll want to know that you need to reach in-side and remove the neck and giblets. I don’t know why the factory so conscientiously puts them back into the bird. And I don’t know why they are called giblets and not just organs. There are lots of mysteries here, but we don’t have time for them! We have a bird to cook! Regardless of what they’re called, I take all these organs and I carefully put them into a glass-wear dish and into the fridge. “I am going to make broth with these!” I say to myself. I then forget about them for three days, at which time I realize they are rotten and throw them away. This is a very consistent pattern and you are welcome to follow my example. On with the chicken!

The whole bird gets salted and peppered on all sides and then, because it makes me feel thorough, I salt into that big body cavity. I dump in several cloves of garlic. Several means about 8 in my book. And then I sprinkle dried onion all over it. When I don’t have dried onion around, I just cut a wedge of fresh onion and jam it into the bird as well. If I have a lemon handy, I shove in lemon wedges. There’s a lot of grace here. Enjoy it.

This unceremoniously handled bird gets settled onto the layer of sweet potatoes. If you want to add carrots, and your crock has the space, you put them all around the sides. No, I do not peel them. I have better things to do with my precious time than to try to convince myself that carrots have a peel that needs to be removed. I just scrub them well and chop them up in terribly uneven chunks, as long as my various fingers, and jam them into the pot. (For any concerns, I jam in the carrots, not my fingers.) That’s it, you’re done! Just sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper over the whole dish and move on with your life.

Options: Start the bird on high for 1 hour and then leave it on low for 4 more. Or, if you want to leave and ignore your bird, set the timer for 7 hours and leave it on low the whole time. If your pot is a good one, you’ll have a timer and your food will just be kept warm and ready for you to eat when you walk in the door. You can walk into the kitchen at 5 or 6pm and feel like a genius.

Your entire prep time will take 7 minutes. Do it the night before and in the morning, all you have to do is move the crockery pot from your refrigerator to the machine and turn it on. Think you’ll forget to turn it on in the morning? Put your car keys on top of it.

As you probably noted, I have not described what to do with your bagged salad. Do you see how much confidence I have in you? Show that salad who’s boss!

By the way, please notice that you’ve just prepared a meal that cares for anyone on a special diet for diabetes, gluten free, dairy free, soy free, corn free and nut free meals. Well done, versatile cook!