In this discussion, we will be discussing a number of key aspects for getting more joy out of the food you will be cooking and eating.

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and have the same old meals every day. If you’ve got your local pizza place on speed dial, or keep staring into the fridge wondering what to make, it’s time for new inspiration so you can broaden your recipe horizons.

Your first step will be to organize your recipes.

Unless you are a very talented and creative chef, you’re going to need to use recipes to get your new joy of food initiative underway.

Some people love to collect cookbooks. You may have many already sitting on shelves gathering dust. If that’s the case, it’s time to put them to work. Grab a pad of sticky notes and a pen. Print out a blank calendar and start planning breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and desserts as needed.

Make notes about each recipe you cook. For the ones you don’t like, just put an X on the Post-it, with a comment as to what was wrong with it. For those you did like, make comments on what could have been better. Create a spreadsheet with the names of the recipes on them for each book, and the page number. Invest in a clear lucite cookbook stand to hold your books open to the right place without them getting splashed.

Online Recipes

Some people have digital cookbooks. In this case, go through the same process as above – only this time, bookmark your favorite recipes and make a note in your spreadsheet.

Saving Recipes in Folders

There are many free recipe sites online, some with better recipes than others. Aim for the ones with 4 or 5-star ratings. Read the comments as well for additional advice. Save them in folders on your computer. It might help to sort them by category, such as soups, desserts and so on.

Tagging Your Recipes

You might also collect individual recipes online. In this case, taking the trouble to tag them can help you sort them more easily. Use keywords related to the main ingredients, such as shrimp, or the style of cuisine, such as Indian, Chinese or Creole.

Pinning Them

We love Pinterest because you can find so many recipes on the boards, often with great photos to inspire you. In some cases, the recipes will be very unhealthy and fattening, but you can use them as inspiration for your own healthier versions. In this case, create a Pinboard for courses, foods, cuisines and so on.

We discussed how to organize your recipes in order to be able to look for inspiration and find your favorites more easily. But what if you feel like you just don’t enjoy food as much and keep eating the same meals.

Don’t worry. We understand. Even our favorites can start to seem routine after a while. Plus, being so busy can mean you’re spending all that time in the kitchen, so that when you finally sit down to eat you’ve lost interest.

Finding Inspiration

Making the most of the cookbooks and recipes you have is one way to gain inspiration. Another way would be to try to recreate recipes you’ve enjoyed at restaurants. Some people are very conservative when they are eating out, sticking to the familiar such as pasta. In truth, this is a waste of time and money. Anyone can boil pasta and make any one of hundreds of sauces. Be more adventurous and try something new. If you can’t decide, ask your wait staff. They’ve eaten everything on the menu and will know what’s good.

Another way to gain inspiration is to try a recipe makeover. Pick one of your favorite recipes and try to make it healthier. Or, mix it up with different ingredients. Or, try a different cuisine. Start exploring Cajun or Indian cooking and experiment with all the luscious spices.

You can also try to eat your cookbook; that is, work your way through all the recipes in your favorite cookbook one at a time. Make notes as you go along. You’re sure to find some new favorites.

Make and Freeze

If slaving away in the kitchen is really what’s getting you down, try some make and freeze meals. Buy some square plastic containers with tight-fitting lids and some plastic food storage bags. Go to the grocery store, do your shopping, come home, and start cooking.

The principle behind make and freeze is to do all your cooking in one day to create meals you can eat that day, and then portion up the rest. You can then heat and eat them any time. This ensures you always have something on hand to eat, and making a number of dishes to rotate means you won’t get so bored. Best of all, if you have a busy family life, or anyone has allergies, you can color-code the lids and put tape on the containers to say what’s in them, and for whom.

Freeing up your time in this way can inspire you to enjoy your food even more now that it’s no longer a daily grind.

In the last email we discussed what to do if you’ve lost your food mojo and just don’t seem to be enjoying food as much as you used to. A few changes here and there can inspire your cooking and lead you on a fascinating journey of culinary exploration.

This time we are going to talk about how to change things up so mealtimes will be interesting once again.

Variety Is the Spice of Life

One of the easiest ways to mix it up at each meal is to add spices. If you seem to be having the same old meat and potatoes with vegetables, for example, consider which seasonings can add to their flavor for all-new taste sensations.

If the meat is dull, why not try your own homemade barbecue sauce – far healthier than the salty kind that comes in bottles. Try a rub or a marinade for the meat as well. There are prepared ones, of course, but it is cheaper to do it yourself. Just look up recipes online and experiment.

If the potatoes are boring, there’s lots you can do to jazz them up. Try a dash of sour cream and some chopped chives or scallions. Make your own potato skins with cheese, tomatoes and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Boil them, then fry them in a little oil with some sesame, black mustard, and cumin seeds, for a deliciously crispy Indian-style treat.

For green beans, toss them with garlic and olive oil, add butter and almonds and some lemon juice, or make your own green bean casserole with onion rings on top. There are healthy versions of this recipe that will give you all the flavor of your favorite ingredients in this dish, but without all the calories.

Switch the Starch

Another way to add interest to your meal is to switch the starch. Instead of potatoes, try rice, noodles, or quinoa. There are many different kinds of rice, from white to brown, wild to parboiled. Parboiled will give you the typical taste you find in Mexican dishes.

As for noodles, there’s pasta, egg noodles, Chinese noodles, buckwheat, soba and udon. Each will have its own distinct taste and add a whole new flair and culinary twist to your usual dishes. One small change to your usual recipes and menus can lead to big results.

It’s easy to get bored with the same old food, but as you saw in the last email, just a couple of small changes can lead to big results.

One of the great things about social networks is how easy it is to share recipes and ideas. We all have to eat; it is just a question of what. While it’s true that delivery is easier than ever before, it’s also true that people have started taking more of an interest in cooking because they see delicious-looking recipes in a number of places and want to try them.

Recipe Websites (like this one!)

The most obvious place to start is one of the many free recipes websites. Choose the ones with the highest ratings. Look up recipes you’ve always wanted to learn how to make. Or, search by cuisine, such as Italian or Chinese, to broaden your horizons. Your teen has just announced they’re vegetarian? Search for recipes that everyone will be willing to eat.

You can also look at your favorite chef’s website for free recipes. Emeril, Rachael Ray, and others, all have free recipes available.

Facebook and More

Facebook is the largest social network in the world, so it’s no surprise they have millions of members interested in talking about food and hundreds of food-related groups. Some of the ideas are a bit hit and miss, though, so find a couple of groups with recipes that look appetizing and try them. Once you’ve been in the group for a while, you should also be able to find cooks you can trust.

The same is true of digital cookbook authors. Some “cookbooks” are just thrown together by content farmers who copy and paste 100 chicken recipes from Allrecipes or similar sites without any regard for the rating on the recipe or how well it’s written. Then you end up with a mess on your hands because an ingredient is missing, or a measurement is wrong. In fact, always use common sense when it comes to measurements in fractions, because different computers and browsers can render them differently, changing the numbers or producing random squiggles.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, you might also find recipe inspiration on Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. Pinterest is extremely lively – the only trouble is organizing all the recipes you find and not spending too much time on the site, because you’ll run out of time to cook!

Facebook groups and Pinterest boards are not the only places to get great ideas and inspiration. With your smartphone, chances are there’s an app for that too.

There are of course many more apps for the iPhone than Android, but the best apps are available for both. In addition, Android is catching up, with some powerful foodie-apps designed to make your life easier.

Some of the most popular apps for both iOS and Android for foodies include:

SideChef

This is ideal for new cooks, giving step-by-step photos and instructions. The instructions can also be made verbal so you don’t have to get distracted looking back and forth at the screen, and it helps you time your recipes as well.

Yummly

You get to “Yumm” (like) recipes and enter any dietary restrictions first. Then this app will keep delivering more and more suggestions based on what you’ve put in. Great for the solo cook, but a bit tricky for families.

Kitchen Stories

This gorgeous app has excellent presentations of tasty recipes and a good search feature. They also make it easy to create a shopping list for each recipe.

ChefSteps

The free app has excellent how-to instructions, so it is ideal for beginners and intermediate cooks wanting to add to their skills. The paid version is packed with recipes. This app is pretty plain in appearance but that does make it easier to use.

Food Network in the Kitchen

This great app gives you all your favorites from the network right in the palm of your hand.

Epicurious

30,000 recipes at your fingertips. No more need to worry about what to make for dinner!

There are many more apps than this, you might search the play store as well.  Focus on your personal goals and select the right app.  At least give it a try for a couple of weeks, as you start to get in the groove things will become more automatic for you. Also, try not to overdo it on apps. Remember, as cool as an app might be, they will take up room and eat up some resources on your phone, so read the reviews and give each app a test drive to see if it suits you and is worth making room for.

There are so many apps for for foodies that can help you find recipes, learn cooking techniques, create grocery lists, and more. At this point, you’re probably really inspired to start cooking up a storm. If you only had to worry about yourself, trying out new recipes wouldn’t be such a big deal. But what if you’re cooking for others?

In this email we are going to talk about how to introduce new dishes to the family as you expand your range of recipes.

Make Small Changes

The first thing to keep in mind is their tastes. Remember the movie Julie and Julia, where Amy Adams decides to cook her way through famous French chef Julia Child’s classic cookbook? If you have a young family and/or are overweight, chances are this would not be the best book to start with.

Instead, think about what they like to eat and mix it up a little. Change the chicken, perk up the potatoes, vary the veggies.

Restaurants Can Help

When going to restaurants, order strategically. Try dishes you’ve never had before. Get everyone in the family to order something different and taste each other’s. Rotate the plates clockwise around the table so everyone gets a taste, and let each person keep either their favorite, or their own.

Make notes on what you have that the kids really like, and then discover how to make it yourself. When serving the dishes, you can say, “Remember when we went to X restaurant and had Y dish? I’ve learned how to make it myself so we can enjoy it any time.”

Make It Attractive

Another way to get them excited to try your new experiments is to make them as pretty as possible. Studies have shown that we eat with our eyes long before we put a forkful in our mouths. Brown lentil stew is delicious, for example, but unfortunately looks like a pile of cow poo.

One suggestion for getting our daily allowance of fruits and vegetables is to “eat a rainbow” – that is, one food for each of the seven colors of the rainbow. Lay out a pretty fruit platter with cheese, or vegetable platter with dip, or roasted vegetables, and you’re more than likely to see the food disappear.

Eating habits can become ingrained from a very young age, and food refusal can become a real nightmare for parents, especially if your child goes the route of many kids: the white route. This means bread, pasta, potatoes, and often means weight gain as well. More than 33% of children in the US are now overweight or obese, and type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure have been diagnosed in children as young as two years old. The only way to combat this trend is with healthy, balanced, home-cooked meals.

Eating Together

The first way to deal with fussiness is to eat at the table together, not let them graze. Regular meals and not too many snacks will mean they will be hungry for real food.

Don’t make the dinner table a battleground. Start introducing new foods when they are young, in a structured way. Plan to serve each new food every day for about a week. Be sure it is well cooked and in small pieces so no one will have any trouble chewing and swallowing it. One good example of this is broccoli.

Put the food on their plate on the first night and say they can eat as much of it as they like. Do the same every night for the rest of the week. Don’t fight or argue with them; just put it on the plate and see what they eat. Studies have shown that this method actually works better than the “reward” method of letting them be excused from the table, or getting dessert, once they’ve finished their broccoli.

Other Tips

If they have lunch at school at their meal program, get a menu for the week if you can and ask your child what they enjoyed each day. Then start to make it yourself.

If you’re at a community potluck or picnic, put together one plate. Taste the food yourself and put together a plate for them of easy things to eat. Again, pay attention to what they like.

Most kids love sweet things. Skip the candy and stick to fresh and dried fruit. For dessert, aim for recipes with fruit in them, such as apple crumble.

All kids love fun food presented nicely. You can create “cupcakes” for lunch or dinner – that is, a complete meal in a muffin cup. Use pretty papers to make the meal even more interesting. Ham and cheese, chicken and vegetables and more can all become fun meals your kids will devour.

How do you deal with fussy adults.  Make Small Changes!

Our food tastes, habits and appetites develop when we are young. Some of us eat like birds. Others have a hearty appetite, but for all the wrong foods. Men are commonly associated with meat and potatoes, for example. They also love their barbecue. There was a popular book in the 1980s called “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche” which referred to masculine stereotypes and food trends. A real man would eat a “bacon and egg” or “ham and egg” pie, but not quiche.

So a lot of food preferences can be what you call what you are serving. Sweet potato casserole versus pie might appeal to one preference or another.

It’s also a question of presentation. Most men love pasta. Put in some peas and carrots for color, and use a cream sauce for pasta primavera. Chances are it will taste so good he won’t even try to pick out the veggies.

Make their restaurant favorites but add different sides. Studies have shown it takes at least seven to ten attempts to introduce a new food to a child, so try the same approach with an adult.

Visual Appeal

Food that looks good will also tempt the appetite and get even the most reluctant eater to try something different. So too will things that look familiar. See what their family eats and try to duplicate, with healthier versions if what they eat is a real diet buster. For example, if they love fried chicken, make your own baked version in the oven. If they love biscuits, serve a healthy chicken casserole made with lots of vegetables and skim milk on a split biscuit so they won’t keep reaching for the bread basket.

Avoid Waste

A lot of people worry about wasting food by trying new things, but there’s really no need. If you have a freezer, just make up your own TV dinners with the leftovers. Label everything for you, or for them, and they can help themselves when you’re not there.

A lot of people also say it is too much hassle to make only one biscuit at a time per person. The secret is to cook in bulk. Make a dozen or two, wait until they cool, and put in the freezer in a zippered storage bag. Take out a couple at a time and reheat in a low oven until they are warmed through.

One of the best ways for any chef to handle fussy eaters is the trusty one-pot meal.

The secret is to cut things up small enough to make it tough for people to pick out anything they don’t eat. One-pot meals that are healthy and delicious can also be a great way to feed the family cheaply, plus have handy leftovers you can pack up for future heat and eat meals. The trick is knowing what will freeze well, so steer clear of creamy sauces or bases.

Soup

The most obvious one-pot meal is soup. Boil up the bones left from a roasted or rotisserie chicken, remove any remaining meat, and add some seasoning. When it’s simmered enough, throw in some fresh or frozen vegetables and cook until tender. Serve with a salad and some cheese to make the meal more filling. If you want, you can also add pasta shapes, noodles or rice and cook until tender.

Other good choices include lentil, split pea and ham soup. Italian wedding soup is another hearty favorite. Minestrone will work well also. All the nutrition stays in the pot instead of boiling away, making it cheap and easy but healthy too.

Stew

Another obvious choice is stew. Choose your meat, such as beef, lamb, chicken or turkey. Brown it lightly, then add onions, carrots, potatoes and other root vegetables. Simmer until tender. If you’re pushed for time, use frozen vegetables.

Chili

Another one-pot meal that’s sure to be a hit with most families is chili con carne. Use ground beef or ground turkey to make the dish healthier. Add low-sodium canned tomatoes, or cook down fresh ones for an even healthier recipe. Vary the beans, from pink to black, or use the ever-popular kidney beans. If you want to make chili NON carne, leave out the meat and use even more beans. Serve with biscuits or bread on the side.

Oven Meals

We all think of one-pot meals on the stove, but you can do them in the oven as well. Try risotto with chicken and vegetables, or a pot pie with a biscuit topping. Roasted root vegetable or Mediterranean style roasted vegetables are great as a meal on their own, or a side dish any time.

Have you ever tried Beef Guinness stew? It’s another one-pot wonder you can make on the stove or in the oven. The rich sauce is sure to tantalize everyone’s taste buds.

No meal seems to be complete without some sort of sweet treat as a dessert, but a lot of people steer clear because they think they have too many calories, or are wasted calories.

Make Use of Fruit

The truth is, a healthy and delicious dessert can stop food cravings and actually prevent people from overeating. They can also be low in calories and even nutritious – for example if you use the natural sweetness of fruit to give them their flavor.

The US recommendation is for 2.5 cups of fruit each day, and the same of vegetables. That can be tough to do unless you drink a lot of smoothies and eat a lot of salads. Why not make them a part of your desserts instead?

Fresh fruit like apples, pears and peaches are perfect for a fruit crisp or fruit crumble. Dried fruits are ideal for homemade cookies and fruitcakes. Berries are great on their own, or can be used to dress up plain pound cake or homemade angel food cake, which comes in at less than 150 calories per slice. Angel food cake uses a lot of egg whites. Don’t throw away the yolks. Use them for homemade bread pudding with layers of fruit, flan and more.

Carrots are perfect for carrot cake. You can also expand your repertoire to zucchini bread and muffins. Sweet potatoes are great for bread and pies. You can also use the low carb trick of cauliflower as a substitute for rice for your own rice pudding. Chickpeas, or chickpea flour, is another handy low carb, high fiber swap that lends itself to cakes, cookies and brownies. Soy flour will work well also. These latter two are also ideal if you want to go gluten free.