When, the other day, my son came into the kitchen and asked, “What’s for dinner?” while I stood with the fridge open, I replied, “I don’t know. I was just going to make something up.” In less than an hour we were at the table eating dinner. As soon as I said, “I was just…
It happens all too often: it’s 4pm and I don’t know what’s for dinner. Now, having my pantry stocked correctly and my plan possibilities already lined out (in Simplified Dinners) does help tremendously in these situations. Actually, it enables me to have such situations, because I know I have meal-makings on hand that I can…
A narrative non-recipe from 2010. I felt uninspired for dinner yesterday, which is not a good thing when all you have in the house is ingredients, yet not all the ingredients necessary for recipes. Of course, I don’t follow recipes to begin with, so it bodes ill when inspiration is low. Yet, this lack of…
This is a great meal to make if you’re serving a crowd or if you’re taking a meal to another family. I have served it for birthday dinners when our extended families gather and just recently I made it when I was asked to take a meal to two families who had just had babies….
Before reading Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, it never occurred to me that I might make my own flour tortillas. Doesn’t it require extra tools? Wouldn’t it take a lot of time? No! It doesn’t! So, not only do I get to cross “tortillas” off my master pantry list, making one less thing I…
In the fall and winter, we eat a lot of beans and soups. Cornbread is the perfect accompaniment to such meals. While the recipe I used to rely on from Bernard Clayton’s Complete Book of Breads is fine, this year I wanted to try something new. I had this thought that a cornbread that actually…
Recipes for kale chips have been popular on food blogs for the last couple years, and with good reason. They are a delicious way to consume this nutrient-dense green, even for those (like my family!) that have no Southern blood and cannot stomach sautéed greens or wilty greens floating in soups. This year, I discovered…
Lunchtime can be a difficult meal to prepare, if only because it comes smack in the middle of the day. It seems breakfast has just been put away, and I’m feeling pretty good about knowing what’s for dinner, when I remember with a growl of my stomach: Lunch. Ugh. One of my strategies, and one…
So, the other day I was totally uninspired for dinner. As I near my third trimester, I know this is going to be a more and more common occurrence! Not only was I uninspired and tired, but I had no quick foods on hand. I only had 1 can of tuna left, no quick-to-defrost or…
Making coffee ice cream was one of my top to-do items for the summer last year, regardless of my weight loss goals at the time. I started off with the Cuisinart ice cream maker recipe, but, of course, adjusted it. I wanted intense flavor. The only thing worse than no coffee ice cream is weak…