BEGINNINGS

Saturday, August 20

Welcome to Weekly Dish! My good friend Jessie, who is expecting her first child in about a month, recently asked me for some recipes and tips for planning menus that would be both cost-effective and worth eating. I love good food, and especially since I've been married, I've worked hard to find a way to cook delicious dinners at night without spending exorbitant amounts of time or money. On this blog, I will record my menu plans for the week, some recipes and time-saving tips, and brief descriptions of how the dinners turn out. I do a lot of experimenting, but if a recipe turns out badly, I will tell you!

Planning: My first step to stress-free meals is to plan well. My food week always begins on Saturday, when I survey my fridge and pantry to see what I already have, make a trip to my local farmer's market to see what looks good, and then return to plan my week and make my grocery list. Now, I know this takes time, but when I first married, I tried to think about dinner on my way home from work, or to wait until I got home to see what we had. We ended up eating a lot of take-out. The time I spend planning my menu on Saturday frees me up during the week to follow the menu on the marker board without thinking about it. Now, it's my Saturday morning ritual, and I enjoy it.

Grocery Shopping: I always buy too much and the wrong things if I don't take a list. I have gotten in the habit of organizing my list by sections of the grocery store, so in the top left-hand corner I write down any produce I need; in the middle, pantry items; the right-hand side, meat and dairy; and bread products at the very bottom. This helps me to navigate the grocery quickly and efficiently--if I don't need any baking items or canned vegetables or snack food or whatever, I avoid those aisles altogether. I also try to avoid huge stores like Wal-Mart; the prices are sometimes better, but I always wind up spending more money. I usually make about one Wal-Mart trip a month for things like paper towels and cleaning supplies; food I buy once a week at the local grocery just down the street.

Use It Up: The second thing I learned to help me save time and money is to try to find uses for all the food I buy. I hate a cluttered refrigerator, and my mother taught me not to waste food. So I try to incorporate any leftovers into the next week's menu. For instance, this week, I am making Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes, and I know I will have more stuffing than I need. So, at the beginning of next week, I will probably use the leftover stuffing for an omelet or a pizza. I also will buy ricotta cheese for the stuffing, of which I will only use about half, so in the next couple of weeks, I will try to find a recipe that uses ricotta.

Planning Menus: I try to mix it up a lot because I love to experiment, and when I first started, I spent way too much money on groceries. Sure, we were having chicken one night, beef the next, shrimp the night after that, etc., but my weekly grocery bills were too high. So, now, I try to pick one or two main ingredients and center most meals around them. Chicken is an easy one because it's versatile and relatively inexpensive. That doesn't mean we have chicken every night, of course, but we will maybe 3 out of the 5 nights. Fill in with a non-meat pizza, pasta, or egg dish here and there, and you have a whole week's worth of meals. I also have some basic recipes that use up leftovers well: frittatas, risotto, pizza or calzone, quesadillas or enchiladas, soup, and main-dish salads all work well with whatever you have in your fridge. I use these basic recipes often, experimenting with different flavors and textures.

I try to cook five nights a week, and we eat leftovers or takeout on the weekend. Of course, life is busy, so I try to be flexible; if I planned a labor-intensive soup for a night when I don't get home until 8, I substitute something else on the list or throw together some sandwiches and fix the soup another night. Or, if we end up going out during the week with friends, I might cook on both Friday and Saturday nights. It just depends on what's going on that week.

On the site: Each week, I'll post the menu to the left and write daily about what I'm cooking. On Saturdays, I'll explain the method behind my menu madness, how I came up with my list and what I plan to do with any leftovers. I will be cooking a week ahead of the site, so the menu for this week will actually be what I cooked last week. That way, I can make sure I have my photos and recipes ready to go at the very beginning of the week. Monday's recipes will be posted late Sunday night, and so forth. I am new to the blogosphere, so if something on the site isn't working right, please let me know by email. Also, if you have a recipe you'd like me to try or an ingredient you don't know what to do with, feel free to contact me by email (weeklydish@gmail.com). I love to try new things.

Let's get cooking: This week, the corn, enormous cherry tomatoes, and earthy new potatoes at the Red Stick Market caught my eye, and the chicken at Calandro's (my neighborhood grocery store) was on sale. I have been wanting to try the Chicken Taboulleh Salad in The Barefoot Contessa Family Style cookbook because my sister-in-law, Hannah, highly recommends it. Instead of waiting until I'm having the salad, though, I'll go ahead and cook all of the chicken at once. One of my favorite ways to cook a whole package of chicken breasts in the summer is on the grill. So, I'll start with a grilled chicken recipe, pair it with a complimentary salad and some yummy grilled corn, and use the leftover grilled chicken for the Chicken Taboulleh later in the week. I'll fill in with some vegetable recipes and add salad and bread and be done. After a quick trip to the grocery to pick up what I need, I'm all set for the week. Tune in to see how it all comes together.