Sometimes, when I’m menu planning for the week, I throw myself into my cookbooks and flip through them until I have a pile of delicious recipes to try. Sometimes I pick an ingredient, and only then go hunt down a recipe (this happens a lot more during CSA season). And, sometimes, I just get a hankering for something and I find a recipe.

This pot roast definitely came from the last urge. I wanted a lot of meat, and I wanted something that was fairly easy to throw together and start cooking and ignore. This suited me down to my toes.

Okay, well, not quite. I was actually looking for a slow-cooker “pot roast” recipe. I actually didn’t think of slow-cooking something in the oven. Or, more accurately, I didn’t think of roasting my pot roast.… Continue reading →

I also failed to plan a special entry for today. I should have saved the “chicken and dumplings for two”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/200-102-Chicken-and-Dumplings-with-Parsnips-and-Leeks.html recipe, eh?

Bill and I are having a bean dish tonight. I might even remember to make bread to go with it. I think I’ll make some carrots for a side. I think Pioneer Woman has a whiskey-glazed carrots recipe on her blog (and it might even be in her cookbook).

We ended up making today special by waking up early enough to watch one of Bill’s favorite movies before work, one I had never seen. And then I hung out near his work to stalk “The Southern Mac”:http://thesouthernmac.com/ truck. We didn’t know it existed until yesterday, but he loves all kinds of variants on mac & cheese (though still says his mother’s is best), and it was going to be right near his work.… Continue reading →

As I mentioned in the cookbook entry for this book, I read this book cover to cover and so I got a great sense of what was in it. Thus, when I was looking for a recipe that used a bunch of leeks, but was easy to make, I thought I had something in this book.

Thankfully, I was right, because I had a pile of leeks to use up, didn’t want to have to find another recipe, and was pretty sure our darling Rob hadn’t thought of any side dishes for the turducken he was making that weekend. (Note, to this day I don’t know if I was right. He didn’t make any side dishes, but whether this was because he hadn’t thought of any or because I volunteered to bring one, I will never know.)… Continue reading →

Another recipe that I learned from “Chef Diane”:http://www.fortheloveoffood.com/ when I was lucky enough to go to her cooking school!

Awhile back, I made “White Wine, Leek and Onion Soup”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/153-83-White-Wine,-Onion-and-Leek-Soup.html because Bill couldn’t find his leek soup recipe I couldn’t find the leek soup recipe I remembered from class.

This is the recipe I remembered from class. I was utterly thrilled to find it again. Not only because it’s delicious (and it is), but because it means I wasn’t losing my mind back then. I did, in fact, have a Cream of Leek soup recipe!

Now, actually, what I had was a “Cream of Anything” soup recipe. However, the night we made it in class, we made Cream of Leek (and maybe, just maybe, Cream of Parsnip?),… Continue reading →

When I wrote up the entry for “Potato Leek Pizza,”:http://metacookbook.com/archives/189-95-+-96-Pioneer-Womans-Pizza-Crust-and-Potato-Leek-Pizza.html I mentioned that part of the reason I’d picked it was because I figured leeks would be at the farmers market.

What I didn’t mention was that, when I went to go buy the leeks, I forgot to write down how many the pizza recipe called for, so I bought about a gazillion too many. And then we didn’t use as many as it called for, so we really had too many leeks.

This recipe, and the next two after it, are what resulted from the excess of leeks.

Not that it uses a lot of leeks, mind you. It is a recipe built for two people. However, I was looking for something, anything, that would use up my leeks and wouldn’t feed us the same thing for days on end.… Continue reading →