Tuesday, April 20, 2010

and the winner is ...

Each week I write a menu, so I can plan what ingredients to buy, what to cook, and what needs to be used up before it goes off or out of date. It occurred to me today that I'd accumulated a stack of past menus - almost a year's worth, in fact - and so a bit of data analysis seemed in order. I discovered I'd cooked 88 different dishes (some of them just once, but a few multiple times) at home in the 47 weeks or so, and that almost all of them were vegetarian. Cuisines included Thai (lots!), French, Spanish, Austrian, Mexican, Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Sri Lankan, Moroccan and (ahem) Canadian. Woo hoo. The meals I cooked most were:

pasta with home made pesto (15 times)
hearty vegetable and barley/lentil soup (12 times)
creamy tuna pasta (12 times)
Austrian-style mushrooms (11 times)
Thai-style corn fritters (10 times)
vegetarian nachos (9 times)
pumpkin & coriander soup (9 times)
BLTs (8 times)
spicy cauliflower fritters (8 times)
tomato fondue (8 times)
Spanish omelette (7 times)
spicy Thai salmon & lychee salad (7 times)
zucchini, basil & feta fritters (7 times)

... and so on ...! I feel really lucky to have a farm shop, Choku Bai Jo, just near my house as it lets me use fresh, local ingredients all year round, and experiment with vegetables and fruits I might not otherwise consider using.

Cooking is a cool adventure, n'est-ce pas? If you'd like me to post recipes for any of the dishes listed above, please leave a comment ...

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