Last week I shared A Definitive List of All of the Silly Little Tasks that Constitute Foodwork. It was a stark reminder of why we need to Abolish The Family Dinner in its current iteration. Foodwork is often gruelling, alienating, thankless, and exhausting drudge work. Powerful men like Michael Pollan and Chris van Tulleken want us to ‘make time for the things we value’ which is a thinly veiled way of saying ‘get back into the kitchen where you belong, woman!’, with a little side-serving of mum guilt. Yay for us!
Anyway, since every day we seem to be getting further and further away from fully automated luxury communism, we’ve got to figure out ways to make this shit easier. Maybe then we’ll have some energy left over at the end of the day to read Animal Farm to our kids before bed (we enjoy the super readable version in our house).
Over the past week I’ve been collecting all of the hacks and shortcuts you use to make foodwork feel both more manageable and like a fuck you to the Pollans and van Tullekens of the world. Distribute widely amongst your covens/School WhatsApp groups and any other forum where women are completely sick of this shit.
Thanks to everyone who submitted their suggestions! A special thanks to my pal Izy Hossack who is a wizard in the kitchen and shared some of her best secrets with us. I have learned loads from this and will definitely be incorporating them into my foodwork life. Let me know in the comments what you're taking from this list (or what you'd add!). Some may seem like no-brainers or common sense to you, but they may be revelations to other people, so I'm including it all. Plus, who couldn't stand to have a reminder of the basics?
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Ask other people! But also friends/family members/colleagues - ask them what they’re planning to eat this week or how they plan dinner around their kid’s clubs/work schedules/gym class etc. If everyone you ask gives you one idea for dinner next week that’s a good handful of meals you don’t have to come up with.
Keep a list of meal ideas on your phone/fridge/in a notebook to refer to when you can’t think of anything
I feed my kid freezer tapas every few weeks to clear out odd bits from the freezer - the dregs of a bag of potato smileys, a tablespoon of sweetcorn, a random sausage roll - you get the idea.
Myself and my partner have a WhatsApp group where we add links to recipes or pics from cookbooks of recipes we want to make. We add a little note under each one with the name and main categories so we can search the chat easily. Good for when you’re lacking inspiration.
Leave tote bags in the car so you don’t have to remember them every trip to the supermarket
I also keep one of those cotton string bags in my handbag (or a folding Baggu bag) and make sure I ALWAYS PUT IT BACK after using. Has saved me many times when unexpectedly needing (an extra) tote.
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