I’ve done what I used to think was the impossible, a feat reserved for only the superhuman among us. With the exception of our regular Saturday night take0ut, as of tomorrow I will have cooked dinner at home every night for the past two weeks.

Between activities, errands, a second infant and witching hour (do all children receive the memo on this one during delivery??) I’d been cooking two to three nights a week at best. Meal planning never worked for me, as I struggled to decide what to make – just thinking through a menu takes a lot of time I usually don’t have. A few weeks ago I finally decided to try those weekly menus and shopping lists you see in some food and lifestyle magazines, like the Grocery Bag feature in Everyday Food and the Real Simple Recipe Shopping Lists. For once I’m glad to have the decisions made for me! I just buy all the ingredients and make all the dishes on the menu, even the ones I’m not sure I’ll totally like. The ingredients in both magazines’ menus are seasonal and take relatively little hands-on prep time; the Everyday Food ones, in particular, tend to be rather economical too. I save my “big fancy meals” and most baking for the weekend when I have more time and an extra set of hands (my husband’s) to watch the kids. I should have started this long ago.

In the spirit of getting mid-week dinner on the table, I wanted to share this incredibly quick, easy and tasty recipe for a Fiesta Chicken Soup that comes from a carton of chicken broth. I suppose it’s called “Fiesta” as it’s similar to a Mexican chicken tortilla soup, with the zing of lime juice in the broth along with the flavors of jalapeño, cilantro and avocado. The way I prepared this soup actually wasn’t so quick, as I made my own chicken stock and grilled some organic chicken. But for nearly as good results in under 20 minutes you could easily use a good quality ready-made stock and rotisserie chicken.

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Does the thought of a pile of crispy fried shrimp immediately conjure up images of a chain restaurant all-you-can-eat $9.99 buffet? Yeah, I have a hard time shaking that association too. But don’t hold it against these poor little shrimp! There’s a reason “endless shrimp” is such a crowd pleasing draw – once you start popping these things in your mouth, it’s really hard to stop.

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Every so often food items will curiously appear in our fridge and pantry. Items that I didn’t buy. A tub of spreadable butter. Individually-wrapped American slices. A jar of Reese’s Creamy Peanut Butter. Diced peaches in syrup. It’s not that I really have anything against these products, but in our almost three years of marriage my husband has come to understand that if he would like to eat such foods he will need to purchase them at the grocery store himself. And so he does.

So it was a little bit out of character for my husband when he came home the other day with sugar snap peas.

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When green beans are on sale for a mere 88 cents a pound, as they were this week at my local Ralphs, you can be sure I’ll be cooking some with dinner. I usually just steam them or sauté them with a little garlic, but when I found this fresh and flavorful-sounding recipe for a cold green bean side dish inside a package of feta cheese I was eager to try it.

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If the carrots of my childhood had been prepared with a sweet vanilla glaze like these ones, you can be sure I would have eaten them much more willingly than I did! These little cuties get to roll around with a vanilla bean in butter and honey (and a touch of white wine vinegar) until they’re tender and showing off a gorgeous caramelized glow. Even with the glaze, the natural sweetness of the carrots still shines through. It’s a fast and easy side dish that we enjoyed this week with a nice rib eye steak. I’ll be putting them alongside roasted chicken, ham, lamb or just about anything from now on.

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I’ve seen other pasta dishes that are similar to this one, with thinly sliced caramelized onions intertwined with spaghetti. It’s almost as if they’re in camouflage, their lithe lankiness assimilating amongst the pasta.  My husband, alas, is no fan of onions so I usually end up choosing recipes where they’re not too prominent. But then I thought about that Jessica Seinfeld cookbook where she hides butternut squash in mac & cheese so the kids won’t know they’re eating vegetables. This recipe sounded so enticing and the onions had a rather stealth presence…perhaps my better half would enjoy the dish so much he wouldn’t mind?

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