Food for Thought

The missus knows how to cook.

As we speak, she has just strained the Coq au Vin and is thickening her sauce of red wine and chicken juices.  "I'm a perfectionist," she explains, "much like you when you're coding.  I try; I aspire."  She pauses to confirm the chocolate pudding is totally under control, looks over her shoulder and asks, "you're not bleedin' writing down *everything* I'm saying for your blog are you?"

In the past, I've tended to leave culinary wizardry to the experts.

I once shocked myself by cooking a mean pea-and-prawn risotto, which I'd copied and pasted out of a book of best practices by a famous gastronomical architect named Jamie Oliver.  I learned a deadly Pad Thai in southeast Asia.  And since I'm Canoodian, I'm prone to gooing up fluffy pancakes with sweet, sweet maple syrup.  But mostly, I cling to a few memorable victories.

My problem is that on a "school night" the goal isn’t extravagance, it’s just something tasty that can be flung together quickly.

And without a repertoire of such quick-'n'-tasty options, I find myself too often turning to Four Star Pizza's exquisite Super Deluxe, and the succulent tikka massala from Jamuna, our local Indian. 

So we’re embarking on a mission to expand our culinary repertoires, and I’ll post our progress here under Food for Thought, ranking both the tastiness and easiness of our creations on a five-point scale.  We're interested in considerations like how long a dish takes to prepare, and "how many new things you are likely to buy" to make it happen.  And the goal is an arsenal of diverse, quick and easy dishes for any night of the week.

[Update: Because I'm sure nobody wants an RSS play-by-play of our culinary antics, I'm occasionally updating this Food for Thought article which summarizes our efforts to date.]

p.s. As for the decadent Coq au Vin? I’d give it ***** for the tastiness, but * for the easiness. And all credit there goes to the missus!!