What a Long Strange Trip....

Well, apparently working for a living is hell on my ability to blog. I was hired as a substitute preschool teacher a few months ago and the blog took a big hit. I have been faithfully making dinners, desserts, lunches, breakfasts, snacks, and even homemade punch, but I was incapable of typing about it all.

The experiment has been a great success for me though, I have made about 330 dinners this year all told, short of my goal, but danged impressive I think. I also realized that by using some recipe basics, letting go of my perfectionism, and using my two favorite appliances (the crock pot and the pressure cooker) I have been able to serve my family dinner very nearly every night for a year.

Why is making dinner for yourself or others important though? This is what I have learned from my 365 day experiment.

First of all it is not JUST about providing nutrition, it is about honoring the hearth of your home, the heart of your home. Cooking for one or cooking for a dozen is about nurturing the soul and feeding the heart. Trying new flavors or foods opens you up to a new experience or culture, you can travel around the world at your dinner table. Cooking is an enjoyable skill to learn or to improve upon, it is creative and intellectually stimulating. It is a huge savings to cook dinner at home. Dinner out for the 4 of us is never less than $40 around here, and that is without drinks! I can make dinner for 4 plus use the leftovers for lunches for 2 adults for less than $10 if I have to, and believe me, sometimes I have to do that. Cooking for yourself gives you the opportunity to share with your community, if you are already making a lasagna for yourself, why not make one for the lady who just had a baby, or the family with a relative in the hospital? If you are cooking at home regularly, that means you are shopping more regularly, you can take advantage of sales to stock up on items not just for yourself, but for your local food pantry. Making dinner is a way of saying, "You matter to me." so little else in this life is made for ourselves or others with our own two hands. Dinner is a time to say, "I love you!"

Feeling slightly inspired to cook more dinners? Here are some hints for YOUR long strange trip into cooking.

* KISS or Keep It Simple Sweetie, yes your meringue en flambe is impressive, but do you really want to make it every night? Or even once a week? You'll really burn yourself out (ha!) if you try to make very complex dishes all the time. I saved my labor intensive stuff for the occasional weekend meal.

* Have a plan! The months or weeks that I did basic menu planning, stuff like, "Monday, veggie fajitas with corn tortillas and beans, Tuesday, Meatloaf, Wednesday, Spaghetti etc" were the weeks I flew through dinner prep. The weeks where I had to stand incredulously in front of the refrigerator and the freezer for 15 minutes first and do inventory? Yeah, we had a lot of cheese quesadillas those weeks.

* Be flexible, my recipe is for chicken breasts, but all I have on hand is center loin cut pork chops or boneless chicken thighs... yeah, I can make that work. Try to limit extra trips to the grocery store by thinking outside the recipe box.

* Adjust your expectations. A can of soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, yeah, THAT IS TOTALLY A HOME-COOKED MEAL y'all! The important part is the sitting around the table and talking to one another. Also, teaching your kids to clear the table and put their dishes in the sink or dishwasher is way easier if you are all sitting there together.

* Have some "old reliables" always ready. If called upon I can make some sort of pasta and red sauce just from items in my pantry, (anchovy paste, canned spaghetti sauce, canned tomatoes, some smashed garlic, makes a pretty decent puttanesca sauce you know.) Even the tag ends of several kinds of cheese can be grated into a white sauce to make a decadent mac and cheese dinner, throw a side of green beans on the plate and you are home free.

There ya go. I will still regularly post recipes here, but I am planning a new challenge for myself this year, something I hope I can come to love as much as I have loved making dinner. Thank you to all of my readers and friends, I hope you check in with me in about a week to see my new plans. Thank you to everyone who ever left a comment. Thank you to everyone who e-mailed me recipes, comments or commiseration. I appreciate you all!

In which I launch an audacious plan

So here's the thing. I make dinner for my family a lot. I make dinner almost every single night. I make entrees, side dishes, salads, soups, sometimes even breads and desserts. Sure, we have the occasional pizza or once in a while a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store, I mean those are staples. However we almost never go out to dinner unless we are on vacation or something. This as not always the case mind you. When I was working full time and my husband was in law school we were "regulars" at our local Mexican place. We kept stacks of what we called "emergency back up pizzas" in the freezer. We routinely cadged meals from my in-laws after work/school and ate at more fast food restaurants than you could probably even easily name.

Since then I have had the time to really teach myself how to cook and even though there are still those nights that I want to wave a magic whisk and have dinner appear magically on the table, (or you know, call out for some Chinese food) I have come to really (mostly) enjoy the process. I am a Stay at Home Mom, which helps FOR SURE, but I too have to have dinner on the table quickly. Those hours from 5 to bedtime go by awfully fast for everyone, and with dance classes and after school activities and PTO meetings and church and homework it is essential for everyone to be on their GAME in maximizing that time. In fact some of my best dinners have been inspired by having "something come up" and I suddenly have only 20 minutes.

Of course you can make a meal with all day to cook and a full refrigerator. What do you make when the cupboard is bare and you have literally no time (or often) no money to run to the store? That's my inspiration right there! A moment of grace as life teeters on the edge of catastrophe...

So for the next year, starting January 1st, I plan on cooking dinner for my family every night. In fact, if you stay with me on this journey of culinary self discovery, we can learn together the answers to the questions, "What makes a good weeknight meal?'" "How long does it take to make pot roast?" "Leftovers, again?" and "Who put the ram in the ramma lamma ding dong?". I have a lot of fun ideas!

I plan on making Lent (the 40 days leading up to Easter) into a vegetarian period for my family, excepting the fish on Fridays tradition I was raised with. And of course kicking that time off with a real New Orleans style crab boil on Fat Tuesday! Cinco De Mayo will bring us an entire week of Mexican food; favorites from my family, as well as recipes that I have never tried. St. Patty's day we will travel beyond the realms of Corned Beef and Cabbage and try some authentic Irish cuisine; sweets for Valentine's Day, a simple anniversary dinner, and of course what to feed your little ghouls and goblins before they go out to Trick or Treat! I'll bake bread, I'll toss salads, I'll flambé a dessert or two. Perhaps even some intentionally! And along the way I am hoping you guys chime in with your favorite recipes, trick and techniques to getting the food on the table.

Disclaimer: **Some restrictions apply, offer not good in the District of Columbia** I am reserving a total of 14 days to not cook dinner. There will be one (glorious) 5 day period where I am going to be in a hotel room in Washington D.C on vacation with my family. We will be making simple breakfasts that week since we will have access to a refrigerator and a microwave oven. The rest of the days I am reserving in case I come down with Bird Flu or Swine Flu or One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest or something. There will be pictures, there will be recipes, there will be jokes made at the expense of myself and others. Join me, won't you? Please? Pretty please? I'll make you dinner!