Tuesday

Discovery of the day: Project Weeknight?

I'm having a hard time coming up with a list of go-to recipes for nights when I can't get away with a BAS. I have a few, but most are hearty dishes for cooler weather and there are only a few that I'm in love with. Many were eh... the first time I made them and I really don't want to have to spend a lot of time tweaking them to get them right, potentially eating a lot more eh... -- or even blech... -- in the process.

My criteria for weeknight cooking are pretty tough: recipes gotta be flexitarian, the ingredients need to have a reasonable shelf-life (i.e. they won't rot two days after purchase), the food can be on the table in 45 mins or less, they don't involve things that I think are nasty (I'm looking at you, tempeh and TVP), and the results need to be reasonably tolerated by an 8 yo. And I can't do a lot of pasta; I'd like to keep pasta a once-a-month thing.

Gee, I'm not too demanding, am I?

OK, I'm going off on a tangent here, but stick with me. It's related, I swear: My newest blog, Cooking the Books, is a blogroll of 'cook-through' blogs, where folks pick a cookbook (usually a challenging one) and blog while they cook through the entire thing; good, bad, and scary. That's the kind of nutty thing that really appeals to me but I know myself way too well to let myself do it.

However, it got me thinking about a different kind of project: cooking one new potential weeknight recipe each week. I actually am kind of doing that now, for the most part, but if I make it an Official Project it might spur me to work a little harder at finding new recipes.

See? I told you it was related.

I'm going to ponder it a bit and come up with a list of candidate recipes. If I decide to go for it, I'll do a 'recipe review' here each week.