Fix-It and Forget-It

Here’s another one for the “Help! What do I make for dinner?!” file. If a recipe involves ladling anything over chips and topping with cheese, it’s sure to be a hit with the family. Continue Reading...

It’s smart to have a reliable, delicious appetizer when you are hosting friends or family - something we all do quite a bit this time of the year! This is a go-to dip for several Good Cooking Store staff.

Make this dish, then simply put your slow cooker in the middle of your coffee table, surrounded by dippers like tortilla chips and fresh vegetable sticks. Then your guests can socialize, while you finish any other last minute prep that you are doing for the main meal.
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It’s hard for me to trash some stuff. Not because I think I’ll miss it, but because I imagine the landfill rounding up several inches. I get this vision whenever I hold an empty plastic box in my hands. I’m talking about those eternally sturdy containers with a “4” or “5” molded into the raised triangle on their bottoms.

So I’ve got a cupboard stuffed with those round plastic boxes—in all sizes—each of them waiting for a new assignment. About half the time the cupboard door doesn’t close tightly, it’s so full. When I start to nick up my knuckles getting a stack in or out, I finally take a bunch of boxes out and retire them to the back room of the basement—where teetering piles are gathering, mostly out-of-sight.

I’m a partly converted locavore, but one of the dark, dirty secrets of eating locally for me is this accumulation of untold numbers of plastic boxes. I shop regularly at our downtown farmers market, where the vendors hand me their produce either in plastic boxes or plastic bags (yeah, it’s almost as hard for me to toss bags as it is boxes).

I do carry my grandma’s wicker market basket (it’s at least 50 years old and still doing its job), and I do return empty egg cartons to the woman who sells me eggs. I’ve thought of coming equipped with part of my army of empty plastic boxes and bags and asking that the standholders put the chicken breasts and the fresh pumpkin in them while I wait. . . and while a restless crowd grows behind me as this whole operation consumes precious minutes.

Sometimes when I’ve cooked a big meal and have lots of leftovers, I pull out a raft of plastic boxes and fill them for my mother and daughters and son-in-law. I love getting those boxes out of our house almost as much as I like giving the food away.

Then my mother gives the boxes back. I tell her I don’t want them. She says she doesn’t either.
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