Freshen Up...Your Recipes

Good morning, friends! It's podcast Tuesday, and it seems the title of this week's episode fits right in with the title of today's blog post. Happy accident! Enjoy!

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If you missed stopping by yesterday, you don't know that I'm doing something new and different for (at least part of ) April. I wanted to challenge my creativity a bit, so I'm looking at some ways we can freshen up our lives. It seems appropriate with the arrival of April and (theoretically) spring. Yes, Indiana, I'm looking at you to remember spring has sprung!

Since food is my love language, I thought today I'd explore ways to freshen up your recipes! After all, food is sort of a seasonal thing, and a new season is here! When summer rolls around, we pull out the grilling recipes. For fall, we resort to soups and all things pumpkin. And winter is comfort-food central. Spring, in our house, is all about salads, lemony delights, and pretty much anything that feels fresh and light. The comfort foods of winter have comforted long enough. Time to lighten up. And that rotation in food-seasons makes me think of a few things you might want to try to freshen up your recipes.

Also: I didn't do much of my own cooking during the month of March, because so many gracious folks delivered meals and gift cards so we could turn our focus elsewhere and not have to worry about cooking. I loved and appreciated all that during a busy and grief-filled month, but I'm thankful now to be back in the kitchen, providing for the two of us with my own handiwork. That's another great reason to freshen up my style!

1. Organize!

I mentioned to you a while back that I decided to make a Shafferland recipe binder this year. I do all my menu-planning and grocery-list-making on Fridays, so while I'm busy doing that, I go back through the recipes I made the previous week to capture the ones we liked enough to declare them keepers. So many of my recipes come from online sources, so I want to make sure I have them documented in a hard copy in case I ever need to cook a meal without internet access. (Gasp!) But this project has also helped me keep a good rotation of favorites in front of me, so I don't keep fixing the same three or four things over and over. (Type A confession: the binder is inspirational, so I'm enjoying the chance to thumb through it and find a favorite to make.)

2. Take a poll.

Friends and family make great food resources. If you want to freshen up your recipes, just ask those whose cooking you love to eat! Call or text one of your favorite cooks and ask for a tried and true recipe - or ask for one you've tasted before and particularly loved. Chances are good most of those recipes aren't classified material. You could also take a social media poll to ask your friends and followers for favorite go-to recipes. I need to take my own advice on this whole point, because in the last few weeks, as our friends brought us the aforementioned DELICIOUS food, I told myself I really should ask for the recipes. So many good dishes! Sure, the internet/Pinterest can be great recipe resources, but can you really beat the recommendations of people you know and love?

3. Make a copy of a restaurant favorite.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

If you want to freshen up your meal rotation, pick one of your favorite restaurant meals and see if you can find a copycat version to make yourself. Who knows!? Maybe you'll find you like it better, and maybe you can find a way to make it even healthier. (You know I love my Dashing Dish recipes, and she has a number of healthier versions of her restaurant favorites.) Sure, it could still be more relaxing to have someone else do the work at the restaurant, but it can also be fun to have an option to make it at home. (This works especially well if that restaurant is nowhere near you and you need a Plan B.)

4. Take a risk.

Even though I love to cook, sometimes I do get stuck in a rut of doing what I know I can do. One of my favorite things about using the pre-made meal plans on Dashing Dish is the way it forces me to try dishes I might skip past if I were just scrolling through the recipes myself. We've found some great keepers in things I might not have made if I were doing my own picking. Try something outside your comfort zone...and you might actually like it! (You also might find it's not as difficult to make as it first appeared.)

5. Take a class!

Ryan and I took a cooking class a couple of years ago at Valentine's Day. Now, granted, the recipes we made in that class were a little fancier than we normally eat, but we did learn some things, and we had so much fun together! Take a class or just call up someone who knows how to make something you don't and ask if they can teach you how to make it. You might find something new for your repertoire, and at the very least, you'll have fun!

Welcome a new season with some fresh dishes on your table! (And if you find any keepers you think I should know about, please tell me!)