How do you cook? Mapping out, prepping and precooking on weekends and having a plan for what it’ll be on Tuesday or Thursday? Shopping and cooking recipe specific, knowing you’ll eat eggplant parm sometime this coming week? Buying what’s fresh and on sale without knowing what dishes will come of it?
My process is of the latter kind and I usually fly by the seat of my pants when it comes to making dinner, although I do keep a lot of basics, my meal building blocks, in pantry and freezer. Whether it’s food coop or other bulk shopping, local CSA produce during the growing season, the magical Misfits Market box I customize according to our preferences, or spontaneous fill-in shopping when I stop by the supermarket for a few stray things, I always fill fridge, freezer and pantry with well priced and fresh building blocks, but no particular recipe in mind. The only half-organized meal planning is removing fish or meat from the freezer ahead of time, or soaking and cooking beans and quinoa in bulk and freezing it in small portions to have on hand when inspiration strikes.
Other than that dinner gets decided spontaneously based on what I find in the fridge, what’s perishable and needs to be used up, what ideas pop up (or not), and how late it is. Around 6pm I’ll stick my head in the fridge to figure out what we’ll have for dinner. If it’s early enough I might transform a pile of produce into several vegetable dishes in one night, creating enough leftovers to play with for dinners down the road. For variety I work with international flavor combinations such as miso, dried mushrooms and tofu; coconut milk, curry, lime and cilantro; tomato and peanut butter; coconut oil, cumin, brown mustard seed, onions and garlic. Can you guess the countries? Sometimes I’ll make individual quick “pizzas” on thin tortillas with leftover vegetables and other toppings (sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, whole egg, olives and capers, mushrooms, what have you) and whatever cheese I can find (feta, goat, other). Friday nights we sometimes do no-dinner dinners, such as a cheese platter with dried or fresh fruit, some nuts, toasted tortilla or bread, and a glass of wine. Or perhaps a big nachos platter.
As long as I have lots of meal building blocks the possibilities are endless. And always, always, always it’s quick, simple, flavorful and made from-scratch, using more plant based ingredients than animal protein. If you think of cooking more like playing with ingredients and flavors it becomes a delicious game of “let’s explore what magic we can make tonight for dinner.”