Time to start planning

I'm a good cook. I'll just throw that out there. I don't claim to be a fantastic cook or even an awesome cook, but I'll say I'm a good cook. For one, I haven't willingly cooked Hamburger Helper in a long time. Secondly, I've come a long way since the beginning of my marriage when one night, dinner was a single chicken breast, no veggie, no starch and no bread.

"What's for dinner?" asks my brand new shiny husband.

"Chicken," I reply.

"What else?"

"Just chicken."

Fear washes over him as he realizes what he has unknowingly gotten himself into. Tiny beads of sweat appear on his forehead. He didn't even think about the fact that his brand new shiny wife might not be able to cook. He eases into the next question.

"Umm, any vegetables?" he says with pleading eyes.

"Just chicken," I replied.

*blink, blink* At this point, my husband is pretty much convinced he's screwed.


And so from feeble beginnings comes a woman who has learned to add veggies to dinner and can even whip up a meal without a recipe, though my husband is still a little apprehensive when he notices no ingredient list in front of me when I start dinner prep in the evenings. I can make a mean salmon with mustard glaze and I've been told my fried chicken, which was something I just "whipped up," can make a grown man cry tears of joy.

My conquest: to have a new recipe to make every night for ten weeks while my husband is away at the Police Academy.

Ten weeks of new recipes means I need to plan for 70 meals, give or take. Holy crap. I can't decide if this is pure ambition or pure craziness, but in the end, one will come out as the winner. Not all of the menu items will be brand spanking new, as the Husband has asked for a few of his comforting favorites on the weekends he's home from the Academy. I will of course oblige, as there's no need in subjecting the poor man to an experimental concoction with no guarantee of edibility after he's just eaten a week's worth of S.O.S. in the mess hall.

Additionally, not all of the menu items will be dinner fare. Some might be appetizers, some might be sweet, some might be side items, who knows. They'll just be anything I choose. There are some recipes I have my eye on that could be incredibly difficult, and some that will be easy peasy. We'll just have to see how it all comes out. And the more I think about it, this could also be an exercise in frugality. With all of these new recipes I'll be creating, there's the chance that I'll be required to purchase an item that I don't normally stock in the pantry. I could be buying a lot of frivolous foods/spices/ condiments/cuts of meat to accomplish this. To compensate for that, I'll have to cut corners elsewhere in the purchase of staple items. We'll see how that all plays out.

But for now, I have my challenge. I'll spend the next few weeks getting together the recipes I want to make and organizing them into some sort of file. This challenge begins in 26 days, so I'd better get cracking.

Bon appétit!