I had one of my worst weeks recently as a working mom trying to get dinner on the table.
Monday was grocery store fried chicken. Tuesday was pizza delivery. Wednesday was leftover pizza. While I cannot clearly remember what I served Thursday, it wouldn't surprise me if it was peanut butter sandwiches _ my fall-back position since it is my 5-year-old daughter's favorite meal.
You could say I was in a cooking rut _ if I was actually cooking. And so, before I ordered takeout again, I dug into the latest crop of cookbooks trying to help home cooks like me get dinner on the table.
I soon found solace in Food52's latest cookbook, "A New Way to Dinner." One of my biggest challenges is that I cook the same meals (tacos, sausage, pasta) over and over again. I need to be inspired to try new recipes at the end of a busy work day and apparently I'm not alone.
Food52 co-founder Amanda Hesser described in the introduction how she climbed out of her own "roasting everything" dinner rut: "What saved me were recipes _ I turned the clock back two decades and started following people's recipes again. Recipes are a relief when you're busy and not feeling inspired to create. Follow directions and a destination is yours."
To help us all, here's a rundown of some new cookbooks that might offer inspiration:
_ "100 Days of Real Food Fast & Fabulous," by Lisa Leake. Leake is a Charlotte, N.C., food writer whose blog, 100 Days of Real Food, spawned a best-selling cookbook by the same name. This is her follow-up with 100 quick and easy recipes. This book is best for home cooks trying to eliminate processed foods from their diets. The first chapter lays out a glossary, primer and Leake's "real-food rules" to help home cooks navigate the aisles of the grocery store with that in mind.
_ "Dinner A.S.A.P.: 150 Recipes Made as Simple as Possible," by editors of Cooking Light. Fans of the magazine will appreciate the easy-to-follow tested recipes. Many of the recipes make use of the prepped ingredients and prepared foods now available in most grocery stores; think olive bar condiments becoming a pasta sauce or topping for roasted fish, refrigerated mashed potatoes being used to make shepherd's pie, and salad bar items being used as a short cut for any number of dishes.
_ "Fast to the Table: Freezer Cookbook," by Becky Rosenthal. If you want to make better use of your freezer to help get dinner on the table, this book from a Salt Lake City blogger is a good place to start. Rosenthal offers recipes for a mix of homemade frozen ingredients that can be used to build a meal, and complete homemade meals that can be pulled from the freezer. I cannot wait to have her frozen Thai peanut sauce stashed in my freezer.
_ "Food 52: A New Way to Dinner," by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs. The Food52 co-founders offer a cookbook designed to help busy people do the bulk of the cooking on the weekends for a week's worth of meals. By season, Hesser and Stubbs each offer a weekly game plan with recipes, a shopping list and detailed instructions on how to pull it all off. They also chime in on each other's recipes to offer variations.
