Looking forward

No time to cook today so some ideas of things to come:

• Cream of mushroom soup in the slow cooker. Basically, mushroom stock with whole mushrooms, run through the blender with cream added.



• All-vegetable stew in the slow cooker. One batch will serve two meals: once with added beans and rice pasta for a high-protein kicker and once in a pot pie.



• Risotto, with some variants like paella and a couscous tagine. Cook the quick-cook grains slowly for great flavor.



• Lentils, specifically how to shape them into protein-packed sides for vegetable medleys.



• Tomato sauce, which will be a research experiment for me as well as recipe gathering. We'll go through at least three different varieties to suit different purposes.



• Quick and yeast breads. We've started there already but we'll get a little deeper into it.

Add in the stock wrap-up as we get a little closer to the end and we'll have all we need to face the world without meat!

Day Six: Grooves

Long day again today, tomorrow will be as well, but I'm getting in the groove slowly. Starting to focus on the real goal: speed. Getting good at it!

Pasta with corn:
1/2 lb pasta, cooked (the 1/2 lb is the dry weight)
1/2 can corn (regular can... 16oz?)
1/4 stick unsalted butter
1 lemon
1 tsp sage

Melt the butter with the sage and the juice of the lemon, add the corn, warm briefly, toss with the pasta. Grind some pepper and add a little bit of salt if desired.

This came as a suggestion from Lindsay. She said anything with pasta and corn tastes good. I wasn't a believer. She was right. Not the most spectacular thing I've ever cooked but 15 minutes end-to-end and I ate it up. Really great!

This is very versatile. If this wasn't a vegetarian deal, I'd have added some chicken. I did add a couple chopped Thai peppers and half a leftover tomato, diced roughly. It would have worked just as well with some frozen vegetables. If you need liquid, use the pasta water, it'll keep the sauce thicker.

General pasta directions: use a large pot and salted water. Better yet, use stock. The pot should be much larger than the pasta. Don't add oil or the sauce won't stick. If you need to thicken your sauce later, use pasta water, the starch in it will thicken just about anything if cooked. Also, if you're using stock instead of water -- it always makes pasta taste better -- you'll add more flavor to whatever you're making.

Yesterday's parsnip stock was delicious. Parsnips add a rich, complex and very slightly sweet flavor. They'd be overpowered by carrots. I'm going to go with parsnips and cabbage next time around, but not tonight.

Day Five: Grab 'n Go

Only five days in and this is starting to wear on me. I think if I make it through the next week it'll get easier. I'm starting to learn that vegetarian or not, speed is the trick. I've spent a lot of time in the last several days cooking. Meat doesn't take any longer or shorter and I'm going to have to find some really clever tricks to reduce cooking times.

Eggplant Parmesan subs are on the menu for today. I've spent the last few days getting the eggplant ready. It's been a great lesson on how to prep something for frying. Here's the method:

• Two days before, soak the subject in milk. Let soak overnight in the fridge. I found a jar that fit my eggplant spears tightly and used buttermilk.
• The day before, dip the subject first in a mixture of flour and cornstarch, then beaten egg, then cornstarch, flour and breadcrumbs. If there's seasoning, it goes in the third mixture. Let it cool overnight again.
• Fry at 350 until brown. Drain and allow to cool slightly.

I've had problems in the past getting the breading to stick to the thing I was frying. That problem is completely solved. Nothing fell off at all this time and it all stuck to the eggplant, even where there was skin. They did dry out a little in the fridge the second cooling, but covering them should solve that.

I had sub rolls from a couple days ago. This time I cheated a little and used some cheap canned pasta sauce rather than making my own. It would be better if I had leftover pasta sauce but I didn't. Bread, eggplant, sauce, mozarella, nuke for 90 seconds then bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

"Parmesan," doesn't mean you use Parmesan cheese. It means in the style of Parma, a place in Italy, where at some point in the past, the going trend was to cover in red sauce and cheese. If you use that much cheese, you'd need something wetter and milder. Parmesan Reggiano has too much aroma and is too oily for this. If you want to garnish with a little Parmesan on top before baking, that would work. I'm not a huge fan of aromatic cheeses so I went with simple.

Perfect. Better than the Italian-run delis in Brooklyn. It took me less than 5 minutes of prep time all together today, 15 minutes end-to-end. Of course, I had the important part waiting already.

Yesterday's stock was... well... cabbage-y. It wasn't as strong as I thought it would be but you can definitely taste it. I probably wouldn't mix too much cabbage with carrots because I'm not sure how good they'd taste together. Of course, since it's my research project and in the spirit of don't-try-this-at-home, I'm going to make cabbage and carrot stock tomorrow. But today it's parsnips. As usual, onions too, because they are the base of this. I also put in a bay leaf every time.

I also put a bag of dried lentils and stock in the slow cooker yesterday. I'm going to have to find something good to do with them tomorrow because I need to move them out of the slow cooker. I need a pot of cream of mushroom soup and I'm going to have to throw together a stew that'll double as a pot pie and I'm not willing to sit over the stove to let that all cook up.

Day Four: Maintenance

Mama said there'd be days like this. Took the day off work today sick, spent most of the day in bed, some with my computer writing code. Then again, this is a project in cooking quick and easy so I had to rally and put in a good effort.

Bruschetta:
1 medium tomato, chopped to 1/4 inch, came out to about 2 cups chopped
1/2 a medium onion, chopped to 1/4 inch, came out to about 1 cup chopped
2 large cloves garlic, smashed thoroughly
A hand-sized bunch of flat parsley, chopped rough, about 1/4 cup

Sautee everything in a tiny bit of vegetable oil. I did onions, then tomatoes, then parsley, then garlic. Cooking the garlic less tends to make it more garlicy. I needed about 1-1/2 cups of vegetable stock to keep things from sticking. Cook quickly, try not to let the tomatoes break down too much. Move them out of the pan. That venture took me 16 minutes start to end. I added a touch of olive oil when it had cooled a touch.

Clean the pan a touch and melt about half a stick of salted butter. While it's melted, cut 4 large slices, about an inch thick, at 45 degrees across an Italian loaf. I used the good, enriched loaf I made last night. Fry in the butter until slightly browned. Top with the mixture from before and grind some fresh pepper on it. Salt too if you want. This took 4 minutes.

If frying the bread in butter is too rich for you, toast it instead.

Delicious, trivially easy and 20 minutes end-to-end. This scales well and I could have made ten times as much in not much more time. I even had some time to clean up around the kitchen and throw on some stock while everything was cooking. Did I mention it was delicious?

Yesterday's stock was great. The celery really added some warmth to the pot. I'm going to have to find some other things that do as well. Today's brew is cabbage and onions. Three cups chopped onions and half a hearty cabbage. We'll see how that turns out tomorrow.

The down side to this today is that it's not all the fortifying. There's not much protein in it. Some from the bread, but that's only because I engineered it so last night. That also took a long time. This is more likely to happen more often from store-bought bread which is much less enriched, I think. I have leftovers and I'm going to try them with some mozzarella cheese, kind of like a pizza thing. Good lunch tomorrow...

Day Three: Fun things to do with bread

Lazy Sunday. Finished reading Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six. Lots of downtime, which I needed to feel better. Not as much time to cook though.


This Sunday is bread day. Thinking of making it an institution.


Bread is all about proper care and feeding of dough. The short version is that you put some bacteria around food (for them). They eat the food, fart a lot and that makes the air pockets in the bread. Not a romantic notion but it's been working for humankind for thousands of years. Incidentally, that's also similar to how beer is made. There's a much longer story but this is an express project and there are many, many books written about the subject.

Dough is also versatile and there are lots of things we can do with bread. I'm going to take a foray into a new method that I've never tried before, a quick sourdough starter. The real version is complicated and I've not managed to get it right in nearly a dozen historical attempts. I'm also going to make a couple of plain loaves that will hopefully turn into a bruschetta tomorrow and something French toast-y later in the week. Hopefully I can squeeze in a sub roll or two. For tonight, it's something like a meat pie, but vegetarian, of course.

The sourdough is a separate batch. Instead of water, I'm using a buttermilk and lemon juice mixture for liquid, one that's been sitting out all day. I'm hoping it's well soured but not yet bitter by now. That seems like a pretty good interval.

Everything else will be from a different batch and I'll work on a good enrichment scheme. I'm looking to get at least a little bit of protein into everything so some eggs and dry milk will hopefully provide that and make the bread taste better.

I'm also prepping the remaining eggplant for frying tomorrow. That's also a new method and I'm going for overkill on that. Also throw on a pot of stock, this time with less carrots and a little more left over vegetable matter from the fridge. I'm targeting some lentils and a soup or stew later in the week. Cream of mushroom sounds really tasty right now. Leftovers from the soup and maybe some other leftovers will make a great pot pie, which will take us through quick breads.

Bread usually starts the same way: reconstitute some active dry yeast. Unless you live in a place where I've never cooked, this stuff is easy to find. It comes in little packets or bigger jars. Keep it refrigerated even if they don't in the store. Use it within a few months too. To reconstitute, first bring the yeast to room temperature. That's as simple as taking it out of the fridge 20 minutes before you want to use it. Then get the tap running as hot as you can get it, pour some water into a large mixing bowl and sprinkle the yeast on it. Let it sit until it starts to get a little frothy, usually about 10 minutes.


This whole thing is an imprecise process. Sure if you're a Cordon Bleu graduate or if you work in a commercial bakery, there are recipes and so on. For home cooking, you need to get enough of the stuff eating your flour to rise your bread. If your yeast is really hardy, you may be able to take it from dry to wet straight out of the fridge into cold water. Room temperature to hot water is more reliable for more people I've done this with. Also, you can put more yeast in, but that doesn't mean your bread will rise more. The living, breathing things you're reconstituting love to multiply. If you make that easy for them, they'll do it quickly and copiously. I've gotten more rise out of a quarter packet on some occasions than from all three packets in the string. One should always do the trick.

Once it frothing, add your liquid, any enrichment, then flour. Depending on the flour you use and where you're doing this, you should expect anywhere from two-to-one to four-to-one flour to water, roughly. I live in a dry climate and use bread flour often, which tends to be dryer, so I usually run around two-to-one. When I lived in New York, four-to-one was pretty common, especially in the summer.

Bread is made from flour, yeast and water. Sometimes you add salt. Anything else is enrichment. This can be things like fat, extra gluten, eggs, sugar or milk. It's pretty rare that I make a completely unenriched bread, usually I'll add at least a little sugar in with the yeast to make it rise faster and some sort of fat in the dough. Gluten makes the dough stronger and is usually for more advanced applications. Fat makes the bread last longer, acting as a preservative. Sugar shortens the yeast lifecycle, so it lives harder, producing more carbon dioxide, but dying quicker. Some enrichment adds residual protein. Milk and eggs are both somewhat complicated as they contain fat, sugar and protein.

Stir the whole thing up, adjusting with water and flour until it mixes into a soft, slightly sticky and pliable ball. If you've got a Kitchen Aid with a dough hook, by all means use it. If you've got a bread machine, sell it on Craig's List. Once it's all mixed up, knead it. If it's a little on the tough side, pick it up and slam it into the counter you're kneading on. Yes, that's a valid technique and after a few times your dough will be softer.

Now let it rise. This will take some time. Like sugar, warmth will accelerate the lifecycle of the yeast. Your dough will rise faster but the yeast will die sooner. You want them alive when you bake them. It sounds a little twisted, but they're organisms with very few cells and I assure you that they have no feelings. Grease the bowl using PAM or olive oil before you return it to rise. It's done when it's about twice the original size.

My first loaf was with buttermilk and lemon juice for the liquid. The second got about half a packet -- the kind that makes a quart -- of nonfat dry milk and two eggs. Both got a little beer because I was drinking beer and wanted to share with my dough.


Meanwhile, let's make some other stuff.

I made some beef empanadas the other day that were really good. I'm going for a vegetarian version of that today, but more like a meat pie. I'm on leftovers again today so the ingredient list was mostly whatever I had leftover.

Veggie pie stuffing:
1/2 block tofu (extra firm is easiest), diced to 1/8 inch
1/2 onion, diced finely
4 cocktail olives (stuffed or not), chopped
1 carrot, diced and sliced finely
2 small cloves garlic, chopped
Tomato juice, about 3/4 cup
Stock, about 1-1/2 cup
About 2 tbsp chili powder

I know the onion and carrot descriptions are ambiguous. I tend to go with large onions. Chopping and dicing to 1/8-inch would be optimal but neither carrots nor onions easily dice into 1/8-inch cubes like tofu does, so try to keep the pieces small. I also chopped up 3 small Thai peppers because I had them in the fridge. That's completely optional.

Sautee the hard ingredients in some vegetable oil. When the onions start to turn slightly translucent, add the liquid then the chili powder. Cook the whole thing down until pasty. Optionally, you can add about 1/2 cup more stock and cook some more. Really, you can repeat this as many times as you want and the whole deal will taste better and be softer. If you just go with the original volume, you'll still get a great mix.

Let it cool.

Today's stock is like last time but with fewer carrots and added celery. I think the celery will add a great flavor to the mix. We'll find out tomorrow morning.

When the bread is doubled in volume, punch it down. This is secret code for kneading it. It'll go back down to somewhere closer to the original volume. Depending on how hearty the dough is, you may end up with halfway between original and risen volumes.

I also did some work on the leftover eggplant. I had the remaining portion in 1/2-inch cross section spears, so I dumped them in a jar and covered with buttermilk. I'm trying a new frying process, refrigerate in milk overnight, then double batter, cool overnight again, then fry. This means I'll need another idea for tomorrow. Not a big deal, I'm sure.

To make the pies, grease a ramekin or cup on a large muffin pan. Anything about that size that will survive the oven is fine. For a ramekin, I cut off a piece slightly larger than a golf ball, rolled it out a little, to about 1/4-inch thick, then roughly lined the cup with it. Fill with the vegetable mixture. The mixture I had made 2 ramekins. Let them rise about 20 minutes then fold the edges over. They may not cover the center, that's okay.

The rest of the doughs, both of them, make rolls and loaves. I think one Italian-sized loaf will suffer bruschetta tomorrow and two sub rolls will hold eggplant Parmesan. The sourdough, well... that's just an experiment. It'll make great breakfast too.

All together, this took me probably 30 to 45 minutes of work, but spread over several hours. Not something well suited to a day at work, but it didn't take much time out of my day. Kitchen space is another story.

Day Two: Focus on speed

I've got a little bit of a head cold. Certainly not in the mood to extend very far cooking. I'm also hoping my sense of taste isn't too distorted. No trip to the store today either, I'm using what I have in the fridge and freezer.

I also found out that Ali is coming for Christmas. That gives me 4 days less than expected. My brain needs to function on overdrive for this.

Last night's enchiladas were good but lacking in protein. Today I'm going for something a little more substantial. Instead of a Parmesan, we're going with carbonara.

Cut up half the eggplant into 1/4 inch cubes. Save the rest, the stuff is versatile. I also used about a third of a block of extra firm tofu. Marinate in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, veggie stock, salt and pepper. I had some fresh rosemary lying around so I chopped two big stalks of that and threw it in. I should have done this last night to let it soak overnight. We'll go with what we've got. Things marinate slower in the fridge so I'm leaving it in a warm space. Total prep time: 7 minutes.

Last night's stock came out pretty good. The onions give a very base flavor but the carrots were a little overpowering. Less carrots today. Probably don't need as much onion either, it was very rich. All in all, I got slightly over a gallon.

Carbonara can be made without cream. That's the authentic way. It's also probably more difficult and time-consuming to make that way. I'll give it a try and we can always go back to the cheating method that tastes just as good.

Maybe we're not using cream but we have to replace it with butter. It's going to be an emulsion, cooked in-place with the pasta. The pasta needs to be very al dente, should seem only about half cooked. It'll cook more in the sauce.

Boil the pasta. It will always taste better if you boil it in stock instead of just water. Since the stock on hand is rich, I'm going to go 50-50. I've got about a full pound of, "large shells," but they seem about regular size to me. They're not the tiny ones but not the huge ones that you stuff like manicotti. Normal shells. You could use penne or spaghetti or anything else relatively small which will hold onto a relatively liquid sauce. Penne and spaghetti both work on capillary action, sucking things into them. Linguini less so, rigatoni not at all. Farafalle, rotini (twists) and other flat pastas are for thick sauces that won't let go of the pasta. A pound is a little more than two hungry people can eat. This isn't so great a leftover dish. Better to save the marinated materials and cook up a fresh batch the next day. You can even save the cooked pasta. It's the sauce that won't weather well.

While the pasta is cooking, melt a half stick of butter. Use a microwave if you've got one and aren't afraid of it. Ali has a strange aversion to them. They're less likely to give you cancer than using a mobile or cordless phone. Teflon isn't bad for you either. Lots of urban myth there.

We're going to need a large pan for this. Half an eggplant, a third of a block of tofu and a pound of pasta constitute a lot of volume. It's going to be hard to stir if everything's up to the neck of the pan.

Beat two eggs and two more egg whites in a bowl. Between the tofu and the eggs, we're going for double-whammy. I'd use four whole eggs but that's more calories than a normal person should eat in a meal, even if you divide the recipe among many people.

Saute the veggies in some vegetable oil when they're ready. We've got to soften the eggplant a little. If you used olive oil in the marinade, discard it and use water. If not, use the marinade for liquid. Simmer for about 5 minutes. If you have one large or deep non-stick pan, use it for this. When done, drain any remaining liquid, set the contents aside and rinse the pan. I ended up using most of the sauteeing time to pick out the rosemary stems. That was relatively unpleasant.

Now comes the emulsion. Use a large pan, not cast iron, put it over low heat and add the butter. Let it sit for just a minute for the butter to heat up, then slowly mix in a little bit of the egg. Stir vigorously. Adjust the heat so the egg doesn't curdle. That's the trick, you want to cook the egg very slowly so it solidifies into tiny little particles, not larger pieces of egg. It'll mix with the butter and other liquid to give you a creamy sauce instead of a chunky mess. Keep adding a little bit at a time, continually stirring. It's a balance of thermal mass, you want to make sure the whole thing is hot enough to cook the egg slowly while stirring, cooking it, but not too quickly. It's not as hard as it sounds. Once you have something saucy, add the vegetables and pasta, preferably still hot. Add about a half cup of stock and cook over very low heat until warm, about a minute or two. The whole ordeal should take about 5 minutes.

Total time, just under 30 minutes. I checked my Blackberry and wrote some of this while I was cooking, so it's not too intense. Now we're talking. Tastes great too. This would have been really good served with some fresh, grainy bread. Save that for tomorrow.

For my own notes, definitely marinate the eggplant longer. It was a little hard with 45 minutes of marinating. The rosemary is key, make sure there's some in the marinade and add a little more while sauteeing the veggies if it's dried. Don't try to make the emulsion with anything else in the pan, it's too hard and you end up with a ruined consistency. Use some stock with the butter too, especially to cool it down if it's too hot.

Day One: Pacing Myself

Tonight's menu: enchiladas a la me.

It's Friday. Fridays are hard for me. We keep it simple. It's also day one, another reason to ramp up into the pace.

I'm also cooking up a pot of stock. Going to need that in the upcoming days. I don't even know what I'm making tomorrow but I bet it'll need stock. I wish I had some today, the enchiladas would have been better with.

From the store:
1 can of red enchilada sauce, Hatch is the brand, I went for the mid-priced option
1 lb shredded cheese, the taco/nacho cheese in the bag was the best value
An eggplant, a pretty small one, only about 6" long
1 zucchini, also pretty small
2 green bell peppers, on the large side
A 5-lb bag of carrots, certainly not going to use all of those today
2 large sweet onions, slightly smaller than softballs

Total: $16

I had some garlic and corn tortillas laying around.

Prices are going to be approximate. This isn't an accounting gig, just trying to get a rough idea of how much dinner costs. Spices and stuff probably won't factor into this much and there's always some stuff in my pantry or fridge.

Cut the onions into large pieces, chop about half a cup and keep those aside. Cut up the zucchini into 1/4-inch eighths and the bell pepper into about 1/2-inch pieces. I used about 10 carrots, rough cut.

I smashed some garlic, chopped up about a half cup of fresh cilantro and sliced 3 small Thai chiles. I'd recommend the garlic but the cilantro and chiles are completely optional. I would have preferred poblano peppers to the bell peppers but the store was out of those.

Saute the chopped onions and smashed garlic in some vegetable oil. Don't use olive oil, it burns too easily. Throw in the zucchini and peppers. Saute briefly then add spices and liquid. I used about a tablespoon of cumin, a teaspoon of oregano, salt and pepper. If you're skipping the chiles but want it hot, add cayenne flakes or powder, to taste. Otherwise, put that and the cilantro in. I used some white wine I had left over, about 2 tablespoons of vinegar and some vinegary Mexican hot sauce. Depending on what you like, you can just use water instead of any of that. Saute over high heat until the edges of the onions start to brown a little, then turn down, add water, cover and simmer.

Throw the rest of the onions and the carrots in a large pot. Fill with water. Add a bay leaf if you want. Nothing else. That's for the stock. Turn that on high until it boils.

The enchilada stuffing is simmering as I type this, it's been going for about 10 minutes. I type quickly. Total chopping time was 16 minutes, prep otherwise was 5 minutes additional. There's going to be more time to assemble the enchiladas. Clearly this stuff takes too long so far. I'm going to need to find shortcuts. 21 minutes of prep time will not fly for an average weekday meal and it's still going to take an hour start to finish. No bueno.

Preheat the oven. 350 is fine. We're mostly just melting cheese so anything from about 280 to 450 will give you varied timing.

The stuffing is done when the peppers are soft. Grease a small baking dish or casserole pan. I used an 8" square glass baking dish, the kind you'd make brownies in. Grease it well. I use PAM. Tortillas, especially corn ones, stick like champions to bakeware. Use butter or veggie oil if you want. If you keep the oven temp low, you can even use olive oil. Put a few tortillas at the bottom, throw on the stuffing, 3/4 of the enchilada sauce, then cover with more tortillas, then the rest of the enchilada sauce, then cheese. I used about 2/3 of the 1-lb bag. I saved a little enchilada sauce and a touch of stuffing for the top. Bake until the cheese is melted. This should be about 15 minutes at 350. Prep time was only about 3 minutes, not too bad. When you take it out of the oven, let it sit for some time to allow the cheese to set a bit. If you're in a rush, you can skip this but you get a slightly lesser experience.

This deal ain't gonna look pretty. It's not going to be something you'd get in a $25-a-plate restaurant. I think it's going to be yummy though.

When the stock boils, turn it down. Let it cook over low heat for a long time. We're talking like 3 hours here, for real. You can't overcook it. If the water boils away, add more, cold water is fine. Don't mess with it otherwise, maybe an occasional stir. When it's done, strain out the vegetables and throw 'em out. The liquid should have some color. That'll be tomorrow's stock.

I was going to make some fresh tortilla chips while I waited. I have a deep fryer that's always ready to go. If you have one, this is highly recommended. Cut the small tortillas into quarters and fry for about a minute. I can't imagine how they'd be worse for you than the ones from the bag. Serve with salsa. I ran out of tortillas.

This whole deal takes over an hour. Yikes. That won't cut it. Definitely have to find something to speed up this process and I chop veggies fast.

I didn't use the eggplant. I think maybe some eggplant Parmesan-like thing is happening tomorrow.

The good news is that it's delicious. The enchilada sauce is cheating: most of the flavor comes from that, I think. The texture is great and I think someone who generally doesn't like zucchini may completely not care or even notice. The bell peppers are slightly crunchy, enough to give the feeling that you're eating something. Eating a plate of mush isn't often rewarding.

From a nutritional standpoint, it's a little lacking. I'm going to guess the nutritional content is approximately the same as the equivalent volume of pizza, but there's a lot more vegetables. It's definitely lacking on protein if we're targeting 150g a day. Some tofu may make this better. I'll try that next time. Also, the tortillas need to be double-layered. If you make some chips on the side, this will probably use up an entire short stack of small corn tortillas. This would also be way better with homemade tortillas. We'll get there shortly.

It took a third of the dish to feed a hungry heavyweight dinner. With two people eating, this could easily leave 2 lunch-sized leftover portions. That's pretty spot-on with portion control. I would guess this will also taste better reheated tomorrow.

So the eggplant's on the chopping block for tomorrow. Need some pasta, tomato sauce and mozzarella. Also definitely need some protein to go with that tomorrow. I'll put the thinking cap on.

Day Zero: The Mission

Today is 2 December. I have a new goal: write a vegetarian cookbook by Christmas.

Or so. It's for a reason. There's a girl involved. Let's call her Alison.

My target delivery date is 28 December so I have 26 days. The good thing is that I already know how to cook.

The goals:

• Everything needs to be quick and easy. Not just quick, not just easy. Both. Ali doesn't have a lot of time, she's always running around from one thing to another and her mental bandwidth certainly isn't focused on improving her cooking skills. An hour on the weekend may work out, but only if it's 20 minutes on the front end of 40 minutes of letting something cook on its own.
• I can't use fancy ingredients. Quinoa is great stuff but it's too hard to find. The average American megagrocery has a limited selection of vegetables. (Mental note: do some research on what I can find at your average Walmart Supercenter.) No fancy tools either. Pots, pans, a knife, stuff like that.
• While we're at it, we're looking for cheap too. Last I checked, artichokes were $2.99 a piece at the store. Yeah... that's not happening too often. Avoiding waste is probably a good thing so I'm going to have to work cleverly around that given that the target audience is a whole two people on a given night.
• Ali has a teenager. They're both super active. That's slightly different from hyperactive, but it means that we're going to need a lot of protein. I hear that's hard in vegetarian food. Vitamins and minerals too: we want to keep as much of them in the food as possible.

I'm sure there will be many more restrictions as I think about it more. Everything's negotiable but the spirit of the task has to remain on hand.

My personal belief is that recipes are for sissies. Well, not completely, but the point is there. This is probably going to be descriptive less than perscriptive. Think of it like empowering someone to cook and giving them some gentle hints. Good thing that the word, "gentle," is rarely used to describe me. We'll see how that all works out for me.

For the most part, I'm going to have to work on this every single day. I don't have all that much time either and I usually come home from work late and tired. I'll have rally on the tired days. Hopefully that'll give me incentive to get through things quicker.

Here are some ideas I already have:

• I cook with a lot of chicken stock. It makes everything taste yummy. Since this is vegetarian, I'm probably going to have to do a lot of research into what makes vegetable stock taste the best. Porcini mushrooms, yeah, I know that already. At $30-50 a pound, we're going to have to stay away from those for the most part. I wonder how much value a bunch of kale would add to stock.
• The slow cooker will be my friend. Little is better than 10 minutes in the morning before work throwing something together for dinner that night. I'm going to take mine apart and turbocharge it. Maybe I can find a way to use it as a deep fryer too. Now there's an idea.
• There's got to be a science to enriched breads. Plain 'ole white stuff doesn't cut it when we're looking at 150g of protein in a day. Maybe by the end of this I'll learn to spell protien too.
• Somehow we're going to have to learn to chop things quickly without learning to chop things quickly. I have an idea. It doesn't involve a food processor or any infomercial gizmos.

For tomorrow, it's Vegetable Stock 101. Since I don't have any, dinner tomorrow will have to be without any. How about vegetarian enchiladas. Cheat for the first day. Cheese is yummy. I have to stop qualifying everything with, "vegetarian." I overuse, "yummy," too. Maybe one day's project will be to hit the thesaurus.

I'll figure out the grocery list at the store tomorrow.