4.29.10:How a cook book changed my life

Once I put potatoes in the blender to make mashed potatoes.

Once I put granulated sugar in the blender to make powdered sugar.

Once my Italian roommate taught me how to boil noodles, because she was sick of me burning them.

I have people over for Sunday dinner once or twice a month.

I have never been asked for my recipe for anything.

My guests thank me for the food. And then stop.

I go grocery once a month.

Every day I dread 5 o'clock. Dinner prep time. It is a terrible time of day. It is the constant reminder that my culinary skills are, well, lacking. And to make it worse, I then have to eat what I cook. Gaging down food that is partially invented because I don't have all the real ingredients because I didn't go grocery shoppping because grocery shopping is another reminder of my ineptitudes (yes, I paid $100 for $100 worth of groceries), wears on you.

And then, one day, I found it. The perfect cookbook. And it has changed my life. I even kind of sort of look forward to making dinner now, and we even eat the left overs instead of letting them grow in the fridge.

How could one cookbook be so amazing you ask? Here's how:

This cookbook lays out menus for 30 weeks. That's right--it's not just a series of recipes but actual menus. So now, every night I open up my handy-dandy cookbook and turn to week 2 and look under Wednesday, and my book tells me to make French bread pizza from the left over French bread from the lasanga two days ago. I am also to make a tossed salad, which may sound like a simple thing to some of you, but for some of us it's not so it even gives me the recipe for that. And all the recipes are tasty. We have yet to come across one we don't like.

This also makes grocery shopping super easy. Next week, we will be eating week 3. So I look at the recipes for week 3 and write down all the stuff I don't have and then go shopping. And then I have all the ingredients and the recipes and the menus.

I am so much less stressed and feel a lot better about myself. Not that I ever was highly stressed, but I had to feed my family so there was stress involved in figuring out what to eat and when and whether or not we had the ingredients for something. I also feel more confident putting food on the table. No more excuses for why food doesn't taste good or whatever because I know it's going to be good because I followed the directions exactly. And I don't have to cook on Thursdays because we have enough left over food from the rest of the week to eat on Thursdays. And grocery shopping is a breeze. For a while I was spending about 2 hours every other week trying to figure out what to eat and find new recipes and figure out what I need buy and that was just to make the list. And then I still had to go shopping. Last week I made a list while Rex ate breakfast.

Oh, and the best part, the book also tells how to make a month's worth of food in 2-3 hours. I haven't tried that yet because our freezer isn't big enough, but it sounded interesting.

I am still not the best cook in the world, but at least I have the best cook book ever.

And, not that I'm trying to sell it to you, here's the info to order one for yourself, though if you're related to me, you'll probably be getting one for Christmas, so hold off for a while.

What's for Dinner?

www.whatsfordinner1.com

I recommend it.