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In late April, Michael Ruhlman called out Americans who say they don't have time to prepare decent meals. "Maybe you don't like to cook, maybe you're too lazy to cook, maybe you'd rather watch television or garden, I don't know and I don't care, but don't tell me you're too busy to cook," Ruhlman said in his Huffington Post piece. "We all have the same hours every day, and we all choose how to use them. Working 12-hour days is a choice."
Anita of Married With Dinner applauded Ruhlman for stirring the pot and kicked off her own blog series in response: For 12 weeks, Dinner on a Deadline provides weekly quick-preparation recipes of good, wholesome food, coaching very busy cooks who don't think they can make dinner happen on an over-scheduled night. Says Anita in the series' first post:
" ... even though I love nothing more than spending hours in the kitchen, the realities of my job and my life mean it’s a luxury that I can’t have all the time. Cooking on a daily basis requires planning. It also means relying not necessarily on convenience foods, but convenient food."
I sent Anita some questions about the project, and here's what she had to say about how it has been going:
1. What has surprised you the most about the challenge so far?
The biggest surprise was when commenters asked where they should post their homework! I didn't consider Dinner on a Deadline to be a "challenge" (along the lines of Daring Bakers or Dark Days) so much as a recurring feature, so I hadn’t really expected participants to post weekly updates. I'm flattered that other bloggers want to post about their experiences working through the lessons; I love to read everyone's posts and comments.
I'm also surprised at how enthusiastic the response has been from new readers who've never visited our blog before, both experienced cooks and folks who aren't as savvy in the kitchen. We even got a mention in CityPages, the alternative weekly newspaper in Minneapolis.
2. Where are the participants coming from? Are they mostly U.S.-based, or are you getting any international participation?
Because I'd envisioned Dinner on a Deadline as a feature series, rather than a blog challenge, I didn't ask people to go through a formal sign-up process, so don't really have a good idea about their geography. Most of the people who I see posting and commenting are based in the U.S., but that doesn't surprise me too much; it dovetails with our general readership.
3. During Week 2, you assigned a pantry clean-out exercise. Though I know you keep your pantry extremely organized, what is the most unusual (or absurd, or least useful) item you've found in your pantry during your own decluttering processes? Were you able to use that ingredient in some way, or did it just get pitched?
Well, my pantry isn't always organized; it gets pretty chaotic and I have to do a clean sweep every six months or so. I'd like to be better about keeping it tidy as I go, but that's not something I've been able to master so far.
The last time I de-cluttered, as I was road-testing the homework for Week 2, I got rid of a number of things. Spread across three different cabinets, I discovered four canisters of Mexican chocolate -- two different brands, all of them opened! I took three of them into the office to share. I also got rid of a container of fried taro shreds; they were kind of like those Potato Stix we ate as kids, only Thai. I must've had some brilliant idea about using them as a garnish, but clearly that never materialized. And I had a bottle of hibiscus juice that I'd gotten in a swag bag at a conference; maybe I thought it could make a good cocktail ingredient, somewhere down the line. Luckily those last two were unopened, so I was able to donate them to the food bank.
4. How has running this challenge stretched your own thinking about menu planning and quick-dinner preparation?
On a practical level, we're already doing all of the things we're suggesting: Planning the week's
