This is the infrastructure chapter. These are the components that make the rest of the book easier to live with: proteins you can carry into multiple meals, grains and vegetables that shorten weeknights, and sauces that keep leftovers from tasting like leftovers.
If the rest of the book is about dinner tonight, this section is about dinner on Thursday, the night when nobody in the house has much left to give and the fridge either bails you out or it doesn't.
A few recipes here lean on tools like an Instant Pot, but we don't consider any of it required equipment. Every one of them comes with a stovetop or slow-cooker path that gets you to the same place, just on a different clock. Buy the gadget because it fits your life, not because a recipe insists on it.
Think of this chapter as the Sunday work that quietly pays you back all week: less deciding, less scrambling, and a head start built in before Monday even shows up.
