Extra Meals
Not all meals fit into the five-night “weeks”. Pizza night, for one, turned out to be too time-consuming for people. But home made pizza is one of my favorite things, and not everything should take less than 45 minutes. So here is where you will find extra meals for days when you are unhurried, or want to impress yourself or someone else, or have a holiday or special occasion. Not everything belongs in the “fancy” category.
When I first started this blog, I put any old recipe I was trying on it and if it failed, I said so. It was just for me. Then I started developing the weeks and had some friends and kind strangers test things for me, and it still had an experimental feel. I don’t want to completely lose that, it’s why I started doing this in the first place and it was fun. So I’m going to continue that here. If something is still in development, I will say. If a recipe is tagged “The Graveyard”, try it at your own risk – I have given it the thumbs-down. If you want to test something, that is great, I am thrilled to have you. Please comment, negative comments are just as welcome as positives.
I haven’t decided how I’m going to organize this section yet. I guess you’ll know when I do.
- No matter what I do, all of my pizzas look charmingly rustic.
Pizza Night
This is fun for a night when you have some helpers in the kitchen and everyone can have a hand in putting together their own pizza. Pizza is just fun to make.
Basic Pizza Dough
Roasted Fennel, Pepper, and Olive Pizza topping
Spinach, Feta and Olive Pizza
Sunday Supper
This is for when you have some extra time to spend in the kitchen, and everyone will be home to sit down to dinner. This is the vegetarian equivalent of your Mom’s meat loaf dinner – it is not meatlike, but it is just as comforting. Make plenty of extra mashed potatoes for Mashed Potato “Pancakes for a quick lunch or dinner later in the week. (And to have with the gravy for snacks later, too!)
I wonder if you can make gravy with something other than wheat flour. That would make this a gluten-free meal.
Veggie Loaf
Mushroom Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Peas, Carrots, or other vegetable
Batch Cooking
As I gear up for a big day of recipe testing myself (so far I have 6 recipes picked out), I’ve been thinking about days spent in the kitchen, cooking for the week ahead and for the freezer. Some people do this religiously, spending Sunday in the kitchen in order to free themselves up for the rest of the week. I’m rarely that organized or ambitious, and my freezer is too small. It’s full of nuts and bags of the extra squash I roasted, beans I cooked or nutburgers I made, but sometimes I do fire up a bunch of burners and lay in some things for the weeks ahead. I’ll add recipes that are good for this as I post them. Here are a few.
Baked Beans in the Slow Cooker
Vegetable Stock
White Bean and Fennel Gratin
Cooking Dried Beans
Fast Nut Burgers
Bean Burgers
Date: January 24, 2010