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Posts from the ‘Main Dish’ Category

Oct 17

Garlic zucchini rotini

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By the way, “garlic zucchini rotini” is a really fun thing to say. That alone is reason enough to make this recipe, especially along with reasons like: the zucchini avalanche the occurs every time I open my refrigerator, a last-minute gathering of friends for dinner and the need for a quick dinner in volume, and a need for leftovers to take us through a few days of lunches.

The one thing to warn here is the intense quantity of garlic and shallots that go into this recipe. The flavor imparted by the sheer metric ton of those two ingredients takes what would otherwise be a fairly boring pasta recipe – pasta and zucchinis alone do not a particularly exciting dinner make – into something spicy, savory, and healthy (the more flavor added, the less oil and cheese needed).

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Sep 14

Last minute cooking

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I’m going to be quick about this one, but it’s been sitting in my drafts folder for about a month now. One Friday night Brett and I had plans to make something for dinner – I can’t even remember what it was, so it couldn’t have been that exciting. But he was running late coming home from work, and I was restless, as I often am on Friday evenings, when I have trouble winding down from work.  We didn’t have much in the house, except a metric ton of zucchini and four red peppers nearing the end of their useful life. I appear not to be the only one with such a situation, since the two magazines I subscribe to (Bon Appetit and Sunset) had features in their August issues geared toward kitchens stocked with summer produce  – heavy on the volume, light on the variety.  Sifting through dozens of recipes focused on tomatoes, corn, peppers, and zucchini, I picked out a few quick, easy choices and had dinner ready by the time Brett walked in the door 25 minutes later. Read more

Sep 11

9 Comments

The joy of the challenge

{Note, April 13, 2013: Not sure why this post from three years ago was just republished on RSS feeds, and I’m not sure how to remove it … there are some great recipes here (but some incredibly old/poor quality photos), so you may want to revisit this post, but it’s not a new one! Sorry about that …}

I’d say about 75 percent of the time that I’m cooking, I like to do something just beyond my comfort level. Whether it’s doing a recipe I’ve never done before or changing one I know in a way that makes it slightly different, I generally like to learn a little something new when I’m cooking. But every once in a while – usually on a fairly empty weekend day, or when we have people over for dinner – I like to do something really new and different, or something that scares me a little. That’s part of the reason I put together Food List 2010 – to push me to make the more challenging things I want to have as a part of my arsenal. I figure this strategy will help me learn not only to cook the more everyday items with skill and comfort, but will also lend me the ability to reach out every once in a while and try something a little more ambitious with some reasonably certain rate of success. Read more

Jan 26

3 Comments

Apparently, I love cabbage!

It is not the wedding ring on my finger, the china in the cupboard, the guest bedroom, nor the solid wood bedroom set we bought ourselves for Christmas (I love you, solid wood furniture, by the way) but the sentence I am about to write that officially makes me an adult: Braised cabbage might be one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Read more

Jan 23

4 Comments

Turkey Swedish meatballs

Look at me, all good and Scandinavian and stuff.

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