An organized, efficient kitchen is the plan for the new year

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Santa has come and gone. The trash can is overflowing with empty

champagne bottles, and the tree, if it’s still up, is looking pretty

droopy.

Now it’s time to get serious about those New Year’s resolutions.

Remember them? I stopped making resolutions some years ago because I

always broke them. It took me three years to give up smoking and

another two years to drop 30 pounds of extra weight that came after

that.

This year, I’m concentrating on things that don’t require

deprivation. Now, I’m into time management and organization in the

kitchen. (I did office efficiency last year.)

This year, I’ll be busier than ever at my computer, meeting

deadlines. That means less time in the kitchen. Dialing for dinner is

not an option because my family’s been spoiled with home-cooked meals

for so long. One way to please everyone, including the cook, is to

make a number of dishes that can be stretched into two or three

meals.

If you can still stand the thought of turkey, a whole turkey

breast can be roasted for one meal and transformed into a simple

curry with rice, or diced up in a chopped salad.

The appearance of “new pork” has produced lots of interesting

recipes for roasted pork lions and tenderloins. They don’t

necessarily require an expert hand, and one generous roast (or two

smaller tenderloins) can reappear on your table in lo mein or fried

rice.

One of my favorite time savers is roasted root vegetables. I

usually double the recipe and separate into a few batches -- one to

serve immediately and a few for later. I often serve them the first

time with roast pork and later with rotisserie chicken from the

supermarket. Add a salad with citrus dressing, and you’ve got a

delicious meal with very little effort.

I recently found a wonderful idea in Eating Well magazine, “Ready,

Set, Roast -- Simple, Satisfying One-pan Dinners from the Oven.” They

paired either pork, chicken, salmon or halibut with the perfect

combination of vegetables. It’s one pan in the oven and everything

cooks at the same time. I doubled the chicken and pork recipes for

additional meals. The salmon recipe is available at

www.eatingwell.com.

Meat or vegetable stews, Cassoulet, braised short ribs and pot

roasts can all be made in quantities to provide a few extra meals.

Stews and pot roasts freeze well.

I have a friend with a very busy schedule who sets aside time two

evenings each week to prepare dishes for days when time is at a

premium. He has about five different recipes for meatloaf and

specializes in classic Italian food such as lasagna, homemade ravioli

(using wonton skins) and a lots of meatballs. Dollars saved by

purchasing fewer ingredients in large quantities and making fewer

trips to the supermarket are extra bonuses.

When the calendar has so much writing on it that you can’t tell

one day from the other, it’s time to enlist a little help from

whoever shares your table. Kitchen-phobic significant others or

teenage children can learn enough to pitch in. The most obvious chore

to delegate is the clean up -- be prepared to offer Dishwashing 101

first. For some reason, breakfast seems to be the non-cook’s meal of

choice, but I’d rather arrive home to a chilled glass of wine and

supper on the table. It’s easy to teach someone to make a basic

quiche with packaged pie crust, and to make a simple salad of washed

greens out of the bag and good-quality bottled dressing.

Another good way to start someone out in the kitchen is to supply

a one-dish main course you’ve already prepared, like a stew, and put

them in charge of everything else that goes with it.

Practice makes perfect, and patience will be rewarded. The trick

is to start with simple meals that don’t demand that too many things

appear at the proper temperature at the same time. Dishes that go

into the oven are much easier for beginners than juggling two frying

pans on the cooktop at once. A very basic cookbook makes a great gift

for Valentine’s Day.

No matter who’s doing the cooking, everything is easier in a

well-organized kitchen. I’ve tossed out the corkscrews that don’t

work anymore and the dented frying pans littering my kitchen drawers.

It’s amazing how much more you can accomplish when you don’t have to

dig through piles of topless plastic containers when all you really

need is a mixing bowl.

Like all New Year’s resolutions made in the past, I’m sure to

backslide more than a few times this year. I’ll be too busy to visit

the market, and dinner will arrive via the pizza delivery boy.

Nobody’s perfect, but at least I won’t feel so guilty this year.

* LILLIAN REITER is a Laguna Beach resident. A self-described

“shameless foodie,” she is currently co-authoring a cookbook. She can

be reached at [email protected]; at P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach,

CA 92652; or by fax at 494-8979.