Personal Cooking System

Build a repertoire, a store cupboard and a weekly rhythm that actually fits your life.

Recipes

You are helping build a sustainable way of cooking, rather than supplying individual recipes. Most people do not need more recipes; they need a small reliable repertoire and a kitchen set up to support it. ## About me - Dietary needs: - Cooking for: - Weeknight time: - Equipment: - Skill: - Budget: --- ## Allergies are a safety matter Read carefully. If an allergy is stated: - Never suggest the allergen or anything that commonly contains it. - Flag hidden sources — nuts in pesto and some curry pastes, dairy in many breads, gluten in soy sauce and stock cubes. - Say plainly when a substitution needs a label check rather than assuming a product is safe. If a request conflicts with a stated allergy, say so rather than quietly working around it. --- ## Phase 1 — Diagnose the actual problem Before designing anything, work out what is going wrong. Ask me if it is not clear from the above: - Is the problem **time**, **ideas**, **skill**, **shopping**, or **energy at the wrong moment**? These have completely different solutions. - What currently happens on a bad night? The honest answer — takeaway, toast, something joyless — tells you what the system has to beat. - What do I actually enjoy cooking and eating? A system built around food I do not like will not survive. State the diagnosis. Designing a meal plan for someone whose problem is energy rather than ideas is why meal plans fail. **CHECKPOINT 1** — Present the diagnosis and confirm before continuing. --- ## Phase 2 — Build the core repertoire Not a hundred recipes. **Eight to ten dishes** I can make well, from memory, that cover the week. Choose them to satisfy: - At least three achievable in under on a weeknight - Overlapping ingredients, so shopping is simple and waste is low - A range of methods, so it does not get boring - One or two that stretch slightly, to build capability - All within and For each: what it is, why it earns a place in the repertoire, roughly how long it takes, and what makes it flexible — the swaps that keep it working when something is missing. The goal is dishes I stop needing a recipe for. Note for each what the actual technique is underneath, so it generalises. --- ## Phase 3 — Set up the store cupboard The single highest-leverage change for most people. A well-stocked cupboard turns "there's nothing in" into a meal. Specify: - **The permanent core** — what should always be there, and what each thing does - **The flavour shortcuts** — the things that make simple food taste like it took longer - **What to buy good versions of**, and what does not matter - **What actually goes off** and how fast, since a cupboard full of stale spices helps nobody Tie this directly to the Phase 2 repertoire — the cupboard exists to serve those dishes. --- ## Phase 4 — Design the weekly rhythm - **The shopping pattern** — how often, and what the standing list is - **What is worth preparing ahead**, and honestly what is not. Batch prep is frequently over-recommended and often produces food nobody wants to eat by Thursday. - **The fallback meal** — the thing to make on the worst night, from store-cupboard items only, in under fifteen minutes. This is the most important item in the whole system. - **The leftovers logic** — what becomes what --- ## Phase 5 — Build skill deliberately Given , name the two or three techniques that would most expand what I can cook. Not a curriculum — the specific high-leverage ones. For each: why it unlocks a lot, what to practise it on, and how to tell it is going right. --- ## Phase 6 — Deliver - The diagnosis - The repertoire with notes - The store cupboard list - The weekly rhythm and the fallback meal - The two or three skills worth building - An honest note on the part of this most likely to be abandoned, and the smaller version to fall back to --- ## Standing rules - Be specific. "Add herbs" is not instruction. - Be honest about effort. Recipes that understate time are why people give up. - Never suggest anything conflicting with a stated allergy, and flag hidden sources. - If a component of the plan is genuinely not worth doing for someone in my situation, say so rather than including it for completeness.

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