When we're busy we often resort to microwave dinners or takeout to save time, but I've learned quick home-cooked meals help keep me on track with the work (and keeps my family happy, too.) To give you some ideas, here are ten of the recipes I'll be making in November:
Ten Things to Make for Dinner During NaNoWriMo (or any time)
Beef-Broccoli Stir-Fry: Try this quick to make, healthy version of the Chinese takeout favorite. I often use leftover steamed rice (which I revive with my double-boiler) versus the instant stuff in the recipe.
Cheesy Chicken Bagel Pizzas: I use bagels to make mini-pizzas alot (toast them, top them and microwave them for a few seconds and you've got pizza without using the oven.) This 4-ingredient recipe uses the broiler but also gives you a chance to use up some leftover rotisserie chicken.
Chicken Parmigiana: This is the easiest recipe for this classic dish I know, plus there is no breading involved. I skip the salt as the sauce doesn't need it, and serve with thin spaghetti or linguini.
Classic French Salad: An inventive way to serve tuna Niçoise style, and easy to adjust to your family's taste preferences. Dinner salads like this are another all-in-one dish you can pair with some hot rolls or whole-grain bread.
Grilled Roast Beef Sandwiches: This is one of my guy's favorite quick meals; it's as fast to make as grilled cheese but heartier for big appetites. I use horseradish mayo instead of the chile mixture in the recipe and thin sliced Chicago-style Italian bread instead of the rye. Goes great with a hot bowl of vegetable soup on a cold night.
Easy Stromboli A new treat for your pizza lovers. I like to play with this recipe and use different ingredients for the filling: mini-pepperoni, Italian sausage, sliced meatballs or salami are fun to swap for the ground beef. You can also add chopped veggies, different cheeses or whatever you love on your pizza.
Garlic-Chive Baked Fries: These are delicious as a side dish for anything; they're also healthy as you use very little oil and bake them in the oven -- no frying. My kids went absolutely crazy over them. Tip: Slice your potato strips thin (think like the fries at Steak N' Shake) they'll turn out wonderfully crispy.
Golden Burger Spirals: Forget the Hamburger Helper and instead make this casserole; serve with a tossed green salad. It's one of my favorites because the golden mushroom soup and chopped peppers give it an interesting flavor, and ground turkey works as a substitute for the beef.
Steak Soup: For the meat and potato lovers. This one is made in your slow cooker, which means in the morning you toss all the ingredients in and you're done.
Vegetarian Chipotle Nachos: Meatless Monday doesn't mean it has to be tasteless, too. Take out the chips and use the filling in crunchy or soft tortillas for a new spin on the taco. This recipe also makes a filling, healthy snack.
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recipes. Show all posts
Monday, November 05, 2012
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Recipe for Disaster
Slashfood.com has a bizarre report here about a typo in a recipe that resulted in four people being poisoned (despite what sounds a massive effort by the magazine to warn subscribers of the danger once they found out about it.) Thanks to some research I did for a story, I happen to know large quantities of nutmeg is dangerous. Even if I didn't, though, I doubt I'd put what is roughly equivalent to 60 teaspoons of any spice into a single recipe.
But: I did follow a Cooking Light magazine recipe once that called for among other things three very hot peppers, and fortunately tested it myself before serving it (and just about scorched my mouth off.) Since we don't like our food that hot, I tossed it out and made it over, this time with 1/8 of one pepper. In the next month's issue, the editors apologized for what turned out to be a typo with the peppers in that recipe (which redeemed me; my guy thought I'd messed up something.)
I'd rather make someone else's recipe than share one of my own with strangers. Unless it's a 100% foolproof dish like my No-Brainer Fudge, I always worry other people won't like it. When I was asked to contribute one of my own recipes for a GCI book I wrote, I actually panicked. I put together about a dozen of my best dishes and then had my family taste them and vote before I decided which one might be good enough to share with the readers. Then I wrote up the recipe (and promptly made it again following the written version to make sure I'd listed everything correctly and in the right order.)
I like writing about food and cooking in general terms; I did a lot of that in the GCI novels and it was fun (because it was not specific enough to make me worry, I guess.) I also like reading recipes other authors sometimes put in themed anthologies or in the back of their novels. Sometimes what writers like to cook tells you something you otherwise might not know about them. For example: the reason I like my no-brainer fudge so much is that I hate using candy thermometers; over the years I've broken about twenty of them.
Readers, do you like to see actual recipes included in the fiction books you read? Would you enjoy the story more if the author told you how to make a dish that appears in the novel? Writers, what's your stand on writing recipes for your readers?
But: I did follow a Cooking Light magazine recipe once that called for among other things three very hot peppers, and fortunately tested it myself before serving it (and just about scorched my mouth off.) Since we don't like our food that hot, I tossed it out and made it over, this time with 1/8 of one pepper. In the next month's issue, the editors apologized for what turned out to be a typo with the peppers in that recipe (which redeemed me; my guy thought I'd messed up something.)
I'd rather make someone else's recipe than share one of my own with strangers. Unless it's a 100% foolproof dish like my No-Brainer Fudge, I always worry other people won't like it. When I was asked to contribute one of my own recipes for a GCI book I wrote, I actually panicked. I put together about a dozen of my best dishes and then had my family taste them and vote before I decided which one might be good enough to share with the readers. Then I wrote up the recipe (and promptly made it again following the written version to make sure I'd listed everything correctly and in the right order.)
I like writing about food and cooking in general terms; I did a lot of that in the GCI novels and it was fun (because it was not specific enough to make me worry, I guess.) I also like reading recipes other authors sometimes put in themed anthologies or in the back of their novels. Sometimes what writers like to cook tells you something you otherwise might not know about them. For example: the reason I like my no-brainer fudge so much is that I hate using candy thermometers; over the years I've broken about twenty of them.
Readers, do you like to see actual recipes included in the fiction books you read? Would you enjoy the story more if the author told you how to make a dish that appears in the novel? Writers, what's your stand on writing recipes for your readers?
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