When you cook dinner on an average night do you:
2. Go to the store and buy what looks good and [-]hope you have[/-] keep whatever other ingredients needed on hand at home.
Interesting to see what others are doing here.
Like a number of others, I like to cook and have a number of basic themes around which various "recipes" evolve. We tend to cook almost all of our meals at home. We eat out only very occasionally or when travelling. Recipes revolve around an assortment of ingredients we try to keep on hand – chicken breast, shrimp, sausage, maybe some steak – onions, garlic, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli and carrots. Also salad – but that’s another story. We tend to stock up once a week, buy meats, etc., when on sale and divide into smaller amounts to freeze. It’s pretty easy then to whip up something different – Italian, Mexican, Chinese – just by picking the right main ingredients - using a different pan, different oils, different spices, salsa, pasta sauce, etc. – and serving it with or on something different - pasta, rice, sandwich roll, tortilla, pizza crust. Leftovers morph in to the next thing as the week progresses . So, following an Italian theme, for example, add some shrimp to the guts from Monday’s Italian sausage sandwiches, and serve with pasta and a side of broccoli on Tuesday. Leftover sauce/peppers/onions/sausage/shrimp goes with mushrooms and cheeses on pizza crust for Wednesday’s lunch. Then it's time to start out the next round with new stuff. So you grill the chicken and serve with rice and salad or vegetable for something simple. Leftover chicken gets cut up , saute some peppers and onions, add salsa, spices, cheese and tortilla for next days lunch. Once you have a couple of themes down, and with the ingredients on hand, it’s really pretty easy to have a lot of variety and not put too much planning or effort into whipping up each meal as you go.