47/52 - All for a side

[emelbe]

 

A couple of years ago, I did a different sort of 52-project. I cooked at least one new thing every week. It could be involved and time consuming or a five-minute tossing together of things. It didn't matter as long as I'd never made it before. I wanted to expand my repertoire. I wanted to rediscover my kitchen. And so I did. 

 

I collected recipes from online blogs; I pulled them from my local newspaper; and I worked out of old and dusty cookbooks. The ones I liked I kept and filed away or PostIt noted and scribbled the changes I'd made directly on the page. In addition to my actual books, I have two looseleaf binders full of recipes. One for those I haven't tried yet but want to. The other for successes. 

 

That went on for the solid year clocking in at something near double my personal requirement of 52. The next year I made the goal as well. And then I drifted back out of my kitchen. I'd leave the house before seven and not get home until after eight. I stopped cooking. 

 

A few weeks ago I finally picked it back up again. It started with a personal challenge. Every morning in February, I will have had a breakfast generated at home, even if it's just grabbing yogurt out of the fridge and eating it at my desk at work. I've only missed on day so far. Sundays I cook up a big batch of... something. Pancakes, mini quiches, this amazing coconut-almond quinoa thing and then my daughter and I chew through it the rest of the week. 

 

Dinner has followed. Not every night but a lot more than I had been. I'm being reminded how much I missed cooking and how much I missed menu planning which is ridiculous because said like that, I can see the former but the latter sounds awful. Until you realize that usually means that you have just this one recipe, say a braised endive from your book club book, that you want to try and it snowballs until you're making crab-stuffed flounder with braised endive served with bread and your favorite riesling for dinner on a Sunday night.