On the Menu tonight...

I love to cook, in fact, I love to be in the kitchen.  Washing, chopping, shredding, dicing and slicing all bring great amounts of relaxation.  I love to measure, scoop and bake too, there's something so satifying to see the results of your labour and even more, seeing someone enjoy it.  I'm super lucky to have a husband who savours every, single thing I bake.  This would include the very, very,very overdone cookies from last week - I may have forgotten them for an extra 5 minutes in my oven, but thanks to the wonder of my Pampered Chef Bar Pan they did not burn but rather just got really dark and caramelly.  I don't care for that flavour but Corey gobbled them up.

The problem, however lies in this - I'm not very adventurous when it comes to meals.  I'll try just about any cookie recipe, or muffin but the idea of screwing up supper scares me.  I am also an uber picky eater with a corn allergy (which removes corn, corn syrup, dextrose, Maltodextrin, blah, blah, fickety blah), I have girls who aren't super picky but they one of them has a dislike for trying new things at the moment.  They love veggies and fruit, like pasta and don't mind chicken, hotdogs and some beef.  Pork, not so much.  We try to limit hotdogs because they're not really high on the nutrition scale, and hold so much salt.  Same goes for anything packaged - have you ever read the label on a can of Chef Boyardee?  The salt and preservatives are scary.  But the 'dogs are a treat for the kids once in awhile, actually for the kids and their Dad.

I make spaghetti (sauce homemade of course), lasagne with the same sauce, perogies and sausage, roasts, soups, stews, borcht, cabbage rolls (lazy mans), chicken if I have to, meatloaf and a few other things.  But I'm bored, and I also am terrified of the bbq which means in this heat we're left to stove top cooking because you'd have to be nuts to turn on the oven right now.   I do check online at Recipe.com (formerly RecipeZaar) and find some awesome ones, but again it's the newness factor.

I used to do a lot with mushroom soup sauce but Campbell's has a hate on for me and has added cornstarch to most of their canned soups.  I'm in the process of looking for an awesome homemade mushroom soup recipe.  I've also become a habitual label reader and the more I read the more I think that the raw diet has some validity.  Not so much for the diet but for the cleanliness of eating.  God's a great chef, why mess with it.

Here's where I need your help.  Anyone have any super recipes they can share?  Either link to it or leave in the comments?  I need ideas, I need help!  What does your family love?  What can't you live without?  I'd love some good casserole recipes, things that are quick - when we get home from work quite often I've only got about half an hour or 45 minutes to get supper on the table.  Does anyone have a great pizza crust recipe that freezes well?  I can't have any kind of store bought pizza and it's a love of my family's, so if I want to eat with them I either need to make it on my own of I use a biscuit recipe I have.  It tastes really good but isn't so good for freezing. 

Anyways, any suggestions would be awesome.  I need to get some newness over here before Kraft Dinner finds it's way into a food group - gah!