Saturday, November 04, 2006

Cooking with magic elves

I have been cooking the same 5-10 recipes since I went away to college in the (ahem) 1980's. While I love my spaghetti, cheese enchiladas, chili, meatloaf, and ham and cheese pie (aka quiche); they are not the foods you want to eat every single week for the rest of your life. So I got into this restaurant habit that I needed to break. It's expensive and fattening.

I bought cookbooks and read recipes but was afraid to try them. I can be a picky eater sometimes. I don't really like mushrooms, onions, peppers, squash, eggplant, you get the drift. I ate so much chicken that I became sick of it. (And it doesn't taste good like it used to. Have you noticed that the chicken breasts you buy in the store don't taste as chicken-y as the chicken you ate as a kid?)

But I digress.

I found the solution. I went to this new place in my town called Gourmet Creations and made 6 dinners that serve 4-6 people in about an hour and a half. Six dinners that sounded really yummy and were made by me, with fresh ingredients. Six dinners that will live in my freezer just waiting for the night I will move them over to the fridge and defrost them so I can eat them for dinner the next day.

Okay, five dinners because we ate one tonight. It was awesome. Chicken breasts stuffed with artichokes and goat cheese, and a vegetable medly of green beans, butterbeans, onions and red peppers. I would never cook like that on my own, but the Gourmet Creations folks made it so easy!! Little elves in brown aprons would whisk away my dirty mixing bowls and spatulas; find me more cut carrots, and help me carry all my dinners to the car.

Makes me look forward to Sunday dinner for the first time in YEARS, I tell ya!