The Unveiling

Here it is...VerWaynian Delicacies: Fall/Winter edition.

Let me give you a few pointers/disclaimers before you dive in.

Since having Evan, my cooking has significantly decreased in it's level of difficulty, and that's evident in this cookbook. I take a lot of shortcuts now, like instant mashed potatoes (my former chef-self would have died before using these,) and frozen onions or jarred garlic instead of chopping my own - all huge time savers. I also pick much simpler recipes, because I find that Evan makes cooking complicated enough!

I had a really hard time translating some of our favorite dishes into written recipes because I usually alter a recipe as I'm cooking it. Of course, I never write down the alterations, so I can't fully guarantee the accuracy of each ingredient amount (or pretty much anything else in the cookbook.)

As I said in my previous post, I tried very hard to structure each week of meals in such a way as to cook something once and use it twice. Almost each week has one or two ingredients that you'll make more of than you need on Monday so that you can use it again on Tuesday or Thursday. Hopefully that means prep time gets shorter as the week goes on.

Most of the meals I included are meant to serve 4-6 people, but by all means you can half or double as you see fit. Or, do what I'd do if I had a bigger freezer - freeze half of each casserole for next time. My husband (reluctantly so) and I, take leftovers to work for lunch on a regular basis, so we make the most of those 6 servings.

To allow for more flexibility, each week has it's own shopping list and can usually stand alone, but I would obviously recommend shopping for a few weeks at a time, and freezing what you won't need until later.

Also, remember that each of these thirteen weeks only contains 3 full meals. That means Wednesday is a leftover day and the weekends are fend for yourself (or in our house frozen pizza and take-out.)

This is the Fall/Winter issue so you'll see the usual suspects: chili, soups, pot roast, etc...I hope to do another one for the Spring/Summer...Enjoy!

VerWaynian Delicacies

(This link will take you to our public iDisk folder. There are two zip files. One is the menus and recipes, and the other is the shopping lists. They're meant to be one complete document, but we separated and zipped them for easier downloading. Please let me know if you're having any problem accessing them!)