Weekly Dish

Quick and easy is the theme of our weekly menus these days. The problem, of course, with posting a menu board full of quick and easy meals is that most likely, I’m throwing these meals together in a hurry, not thinking about exactly how much of this or that I’m using, and sometimes not even stopping long enough to photograph said meal (gasp!) Which makes the part where I communicate to you how to make fast, easy food rather difficult.

But I’m trying to do better. David’s carbonara was a step in the right direction (of course it helped that I wasn’t actually cooking that meal, so I could document what was happening).

One thing that works for me is to make a large batch of something or the other on Saturday or Sunday and then use it in different ways throughout the week. For instance, last week I made a big batch of ratatouille, a lovely stew of end-of-summer vegetables, using this recipe from the beautiful blog La Tartine Gourmande. One night we had it over spaghetti, topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese; later on in the week, I spread a thick layer of the ratatouille on top of a pizza crust and finished with slices of fresh mozzarella cheese. Both variations were delicious, and because the ratatouille was already made, each meal came together in a snap. See, it was even still light enough for us to eat outdoors:

And, even better, it’s actually gotten below 80 degrees in the evenings, so being outdoors is bearable; pleasant even. I hope the weather is cooling off where you are too!

Posted: Monday, September 4th, 2006 at 7:25 pm Filed under: Weekly Menu, Vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.