Our Daily bread

Brandon and I have been eating out too much lately. I realized this last night when we were debating where to go, and we kept realizing that we'd "just had" chinese/mexican/american/whatever.

So, I've made the executive decision (as executive chef chez Boggs-Renner) to plan, prepare, and cook a little more often at home. This isn't a sacrifice; I actually really like to cook. But I get into these ruts where I didn't plan very well before my last grocery trip, so we have really random ingredients on hand, and I really can't be bothered to figure out how to make something edible out of them.

I think the planning is the key. I figure there's one of two ways to do this: either you can buy the same basic ingredients at the store every week and cycle through a repetoir of a dozen or so recipes, or you can sit down with your cook books and plan out a week's worth of meals, write down the ingredients, and buy. (Or, I suppose, a combination of the two.)

The latter is obviously more labor intensive, but I tend to get bored easily. And hey, I'm young and strong, I don't have small children, I have an overabundance of cookbooks and a husband with a fairly adventurous palatte. This shouldn't be too difficult.

In fact, I got THREE new cookbooks for Christmas that I've been dying to try out. Only problem is that two of them, The Barefoot Contessa in Paris and Nigella Lawson's Nigella Bites, are definitely NOT "healthy" recipes.

So, I came up with a plan: once a week, when I sit down to make my menu and my grocery list, I'm going to ask Hubby to go through the new cookbooks with me, and we will pick out one fabulous meal to make. No holds barred, no substituting low fat ingredients for their full fat counterparts. We will make it an Event. A Sunday Dinner, if you will (regardless of when we actually eat it.) And Brandon likes to help me cook sometimes, so it will be a culinary adventure for us.

I'll keep you posted on what we choose and how it comes out. Maybe I'll even take a digital picture. Gotta love the digital age.