Sometimes I get feedback that somebody followed one of my recipes and “it’s just not as good as yours.” Being an analyst by trade, I naturally launch an immediate interrogation. Almost always, I am able to rapidly determine that what kept my friend from recreating my usual results is related to one of two things: either failure to follow the instructions, or they simply didn’t use good-quality ingredients.

This post is not about the first possible reason listed, as it makes my blood pressure climb. RTFM, people, or don’t come whining to me about your results – I took the time to write it out for a reason; because it matters. If you do need pictures all along the way, there are myriad excellent food blogging sites that you will just fall in love with. Get ye forth and google ‘em!

Ahem, let’s get myself back on track, now that you’ve all figured out why I will never be a food blogger or ever receive a promotion to any type of management position at work. This particular post is about ensuring you are using the best ingredients you can afford when cooking. That’s right – I know very well that good ingredients cost more than cheapski ones. So let’s talk about how to address that.

Shop Smart & Stock Up

While I will be the first to agree that real vanilla extract costs more than imitation vanilla flavoring, good butter costs more than margarine, and center cut pork loin costs more than the sirloin, there’s nothing to keep one from shopping sales and stocking up with a little pre-planning. Just check the dates on shelf-stable items to get the longest life you can from the selection available, and be sure to freeze any perishables that are targeted for the icebox promptly. Check your pantry and freezer regularly to ensure you are using up good stuff before it expires. I recently had to throw out an entire little tub of chopped sugared dates and it nearly made me cry.

Store Brands v. Name Brands

Sometimes there’s not a darn thing wrong with a store brand – I use store-brand light brown sugar more often than name-brand as a rule, for example. Just watch the prices (focus in particular on the per/ounce pricing in the little print on the shelf stickers) take a look, and decide what you’re willing to take a risk on. You may be like my Mom, who discovered that the store-brand boxed mixes for dried potato dishes at her preferred grocery chain are tastier than the name-brand ones. Don’t forget that often the same company is making and packaging these things for both modes of presentation. Now, that said, if you are really passionate about a particular item from a particular brand, stick with it. I have things I won’t budge on myself, like my preferred brand of butter.

Look Into Canning & Preserving

For those who have an interest in preserving and canning and all those amazing domestic skills that I absolutely do not possess, please check out This Post from Two Hands and a Bleeding Heart. Check out her Resources page as well. She shows you how a person with a regular kitchen can accomplish such feats.

When in Doubt, Throw it OUT

Yes, it’s a cliche, but it is a correct one. I am not even kidding. All it took was one bout of mild self-induced food poisoning to turn DMc and me into chronic “sniff testers.” Don’t run the risk. For realz.

GIGO – Garbage in, garbage out. It’s not just an IT acronym.

All professional chefs, and most fancy home-cooks, would be horrified to see me in action in the kitchen. I don’t do anything “properly,” and I indiscriminately throw together whatever I think will work. I unabashedly leverage convenience foods of all types – canned soup, broth from a carton, processed cheese, frozen vegetables, the list goes on and on. My appetite has no shame, none at all.

You will rarely see me using an actual recipe unless I am baking, as that generally requires a certain amount of precision for success. I learned how to cook from my mother and my late grandmother, both solid Southern cooks who taught me all the basics, most of which I have developed a Lazy Working Woman’s approach to. I’m very big on researching recipes on some of my favorite food sites, then coming up with my own take on the information. Sometimes it works out great, sometimes not so much.

When I am in the mood to cook, I usually take a tour of the fridge, freezer and pantry, and throw something together on ad-hoc basis. My husband, who also cooks, is the same way. However, sometimes we end up with something that is so damn good, we have to write it down so we don’t forget how we made it.

That is where any recipes I post come from: it was good enough to write down.

I like to cook – I like it a lot. When I am in the mood for it, and only when I am in the mood for it. Try to get me to cook when I don’t feel like it, and I’ll point you straight to the extra freezer we run in our garage. Fortunately, odds are you’ll find something nummy out there that requires only some microwaving to be ready for consumption.

See, that’s part of the trick at our house. We both work, and we are frequently too exhausted when we get home to do more than have a cocktail, bitch about our respective days, and heat something up to eat while we watch TV.

That’s where the spare freezer comes into play. When we do choose to cook, we almost always cook considerably more food than is needed for two – then we freeze the overage for later. It’s usually just as easy to cook in a larger volume than needed for that one meal than not. This habit is the only thing that keeps us from being the sole support of our local pizza delivery franchises.

Here are some of the things we find freeze very well for later use:

• Seasoned ground beef or turkey – get out the really big skillet and cook up three pounds instead of one. Freeze the extra two pounds portioned out in quart freezer bags.
• Any grilled meat – steaks, chicken, pork chops and tenderloins. Cooked meat keeps longer than raw meat. There is no scientific basis for this statement other than my own personal experience – but we find it to be so.
• Hamburger patties – I make up to eight half-pound patties at a time, and freeze them three to a gallon freezer bag, separated by parchment paper. You could pre-cook these, but they’re better if you just defrost ‘em and grill or fry them up fresh.
• Anything cooked in a big pot – spaghetti sauce, chili, soups and stews. The only rule of thumb I will offer here is that chunk potatoes don’t freeze too well, as they get sort of mealy when they thaw back out. Unless you’re talking about my Freezer-Friendly Mashed Potatoes, which thaw and reheat beautifully.
• Sauteed mushrooms & onions. Oh, yeah.
• DMc’s Mexican Rice. Or his Saffron Rice. Again, in quart freezer bags.
• Lasagna, or any loaded up pasta dish, really.
• Gravies, if not cream-based (those don’t defrost so well).
• Sturdy cakes – pound cake, dense fudge cake, and the like.
• Cookies! A dozen cookies packs nicely into a quart freezer bag, and we like to be able to pull a bag out on the fly for entertaining or to take to DMc’s mother, The Cookie Maven, when we go see them.

We keep this kind of stuff and a shitload of frozen vegetables on hand at all times, and we can always come up with a delicious meal in under 30 minutes. S’truth.