Wednesday, September 19, 2012

"Out of the mouths of babes comes.....(Bible)

...the truth. Last night my son asked if we had any cook books. I have a library's worth of cook books!!!  He needed some samples of typography and lay-out for one of his university courses. This was my shining hour - OK 5 mins.

I started with - The Joy of Cooking.."This is from my mother, your grandmother, she got it in the 1950s,...I went on until his eyes started to glaze. Then I moved to The Silver Palate opened it up and pointed out the neat columns for annotations and my even neater annotations :) He glazed again. Finally I finished with a picture book of Tapas that I had bought for my husband last Christmas in Barcelona. This time he didn't glaze he just looked a little stunned and said, "If you guys have so many cook books, how come we eat the same things all the time?"

He was so right. I used to cook a lot. I have notes in many of the cook books indicating that I had actually made at lot of these recipes. Wow, I impressed myself. Well, I guess that I have become lazy. Hamburger on Monday in winter means Spaghetti and the left over sauce with a can of beans means Chili on Tuesday. Now I do cook rice for those who eat Chili with rice and if I cook enough, I can stir fry the rice with more leftovers from the fridge on Wednesday with maybe some chicken or fish. Thursday, requires some thought. When the eldest was in school we used to have him make tacos. Now I usually do curry with a bottled sauce.  Friday my husband brings home something already made from the supermarket and those are the work week meals!!

Saturday and Sunday we get a little fancy with BBQ'd salmon or pasta with fresh clams. Maybe steak or ribs. A roast in winter works sometimes but my husband has to watch his cholesterol levels, so we can't have too many of the very traditional Sunday spreads.

I guess that this is a wake up call to try a few more interesting dishes - maybe I need to buy another cook book - always an excuse and start some new annotations!!


I hate the fact that BBQ season is almost over.

Have an inventive day.

2 comments:

  1. We have the same thing--tons of cookbooks, settled down into a set of recipes we know and like. To break up the monotony, though, what we'll do sometimes is pick a random veggie or meat in the supermarket, go home, and look up a recipe online for what we picked. Has led to some entertaining results, with no required trips to McDonalds yet.

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  2. I love it when all of a sudden our puddleducks join the real world even for a minute!lolol
    I have started getting Anthony Bordain from the library, what fun he is...travel, food, drink...it is all re...discovery of the basic traditional foods...oh ya! the new trend for the youngsters...In these economic times, if we still remember how to cook it is less expensive and much more healthy eating if we took more time in the kitchen...everyone! I think they are calling it "Slow Cooking" now lololol ♥Debi

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