After drinking 2 bottles of wine last night careful thought, I made a pledge this morning: stock up on easy, fun dinner recipes. I love like know how to cook, but I have fallen into a boring routine. On Sunday night I cook a big pot of pasta, throw in a bunch of vegetables, and make 3-4 portions to eat during the week. Reasonably healthy but totally un-fabulous. It’s time to shake things up. In my quest for easy, fun dinner recipes, I came up the with following guidelines:
Easy, Fun Dinner Recipes Pledge
1) Make a sauce. Sauce sounds interesting! I am going to start with this list from Cooking Light
2) Marinate. After some preliminary internet research it seems as long as you have one acidic or enzymatic liquid (lemon juice, vinegar, wine, etc) you can get creative with your other ingredients. I want to try hot honey orange BBQ
3) Love Your Grocery Store. In writing this post I realized my grocery store is merely functional. I love the nice Chinese family and they sell cereal. Not fabulous. I want to find a grocery store I love! There’s a market near me with fresh produce stands, butcher counters, cheese stands…I am going to make the time to go and (hopefully) get inspired.
4) Mix and Match. Last week, I made pasta. Next week, I’m going to make quinoa. Hey, maybe I’ll try farrow. Or barley. More realistically, a different shape of pasta. But the intention is the important part! It’s time to get creative.
5) Know Your Pantry. I personally don’t believe in keeping too much food in the pantry. It seems that those “won’t-it-be-nice-to-have-cookies-when-I-have-company” cookies turn into “won’t-it-be-nice-to-sit-on-the-couch-and-get-fat” cookies every time. So this list is short but sweet and full of things it is difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to binge-eat on a random Tuesday night.
Things I always have in my pantry:
Olive oil
Tomato paste
Cinnamon
Chile powder
Herbs de Provence
Eggs
Frozen spinach
How do you deal with weeknight cooking? Post a comment and let me know–I need all the help I can get! If you’re interested in this topic, check out my post on Alice Waters here.
And of course, thanks to Ella Olsson for the banner photo! Check out her work on Unsplash.