Rachel's Viewfinder

If, as my co-worker Andy says, “creativity is not instant grits,” then how do you make time to let the creative kettle boil?  “Lack of time,” frequently ends up as my excuse for not getting things done.  Honest, it can be a legitimate excuse.  If you’re like me, and you work a 9-5, five days out of the week, plus need time to cook, clean, chill-out, and check Facebook, there’s not much time left for creativity.  Or is there?

A few months ago, I completed an interesting exercise: I listed out all the things I had to do, and all the things I wanted to do, and then assigned the amount of time it took to do each.  These lists included everything from making supper, to commuting to work, to watching TV.  After all was written out, I compared the lists and the time left over.  I found that I was left with about two hours or so a day to do whatever I wanted.  In reality, most of that extra time was probably frittered away with lolly-gagging on other things.  But after studying the lists a little while longer, I started to see what took up most of my time during the day.  The obvious ones were “work,” and “sleep.”  So was “commuting.”  But surprising, another big chunk of time was taken up with “cooking.”

Including everything from prep time, to eating, and clean up, daily meals took about four hours out of every day.  And it took almost half of that time to cook supper.  Good grief!  No wonder why I felt like my evenings were full!  My husband and ate late, and spent most of the evening working in the kitchen instead of relaxing. 

When I was a kid, my Mom, for a while, did the whole “once a month cooking” thing.  It involved an entire weekend, a hot kitchen, towers of Tupperware containers, and a huge bulk freezer.  We packed away cooked meals, ready to be thawed later in the month and eaten.  As a married woman, I live in a small efficiency apartment.  My freezer is about the size of a small cupboard, and though I’m not feeding a family of five, there’s only so much you can fit in that thing.  But instead of a month…I toyed with the idea of cooking all the meals ahead for a week.

I talked the idea over with Robo, and he agreed to help me do all the cooking.  We took a Sunday afternoon, and cooked and cooked.  In four hours, we cooked enough food to last us the week.  Now here’s the scary thing: cooking on week-nights would take us two, to two and a half hours to make supper.  Now, with meals all cooked, supper took only twenty minutes to make.  Talk about gaining time!  We were eating earlier, feeling healthier, and having more time in the evenings to do other things.

For the past two months, we’ve made Sunday afternoons our cooking day.  We plan our meals out for the week, and then fire up the kitchen.  Typically, big containers of food last us a few days, so we only have to cook three or four different things.  Big favorites are stir-fry, chicken and dumpling casserole, and pots of soup.  Then all we have to do is take out an evening’s portion, heat it up, and serve!  And if we end up having people over, we just heat up a little more.

As you pursue time to be creative, I encourage you to examine your day, and see where the biggest chunks of your time are taken.  You may not need to re-arrange your cooking schedule, perhaps.  But you may find an unexpected pocket of time lurking in between paying bills and feeding the dog.  Take advantage of it!  If we are to practice our creativity constantly, then we must make the time to be creative!

If you want to try your hand at the “cooking ahead of time” thing, but don’t want to try it for a whole week, just try it for one day.  Here’s a Caribbean recipe my husband and I cooked up over this past weekend.  It simmers on the stove for over an hour, leaving you some time to be creative before supper.

Caribbean Chicken in Coconut Milk

3 lbs. of portioned sized chicken (thighs and legs work great; I used boneless to save time)

¼ cup of canola or safflower oil (use coconut oil for more flavor)

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

¼ lb. chopped mushrooms (I skipped these; not a mushroom fan)

2 cups of coconut milk (I used So Delicious unsweetened coconut milk beverage and it’s also gluten-free!)

salt and pepper

oregano

cayenne pepper

thyme

Towel dry the chicken.  In a large skillet, heat the oil on medium heat and fry the chicken until brown on the outside.  No need to cook all the way through.  Remove chicken from oil, set aside.  In same pan, saute the onions, garlic, and the mushrooms (if using) for about three minutes or until translucent.  Return the chicken to the pan, and add the coconut milk.  Season with salt and pepper, oregano, cayenne pepper and thyme (I guess-imated my seasonings…use what you think is best).  Stir the pan to mix all the ingredients, and then lower the heat to a simmer.  Simmer the chicken until tender, about 1 ¼-1/2 hours.  The cooked coconut milk will be like gravy.  Serve over rice or mashed potatoes (though rice would be more authentic to the islands).

Serves 6

Adapted from “Island Cooking, Recipes from the Caribbean” by Dunstan A. Harris, The Crossing Press, 1988.

Happy cooking, and happy creating!