Tonight I’m posting from my old stomping grounds, Jackson Heights, New York. It still feels like home, even though I really don’t miss the traffic and the parking.

We had a great time catching up with family over dinner and an utterly delicious mushroom and walnut soup made with mushrooms from our local csa. 

One of the things I miss most about living here is my csa share, in particular the sense of community it created. 

Aaaaand that’s my cue to sign off (before sentimentality takes over completely). Also, I’m posting from my phone and have no idea if it will work.

The kids and I ate in the car tonight. Car-sadillas and apples. Aside from the fact that they were homemade quesadillas and not fast food, there was really nothing inspiring or photo-worthy about dinner.

And with that out of the way. I thought I could tell you about our new-ish kitchen.

In case you haven’t seen it, the blog has an In The Kitchen section which you can visit right here. I’ve been wanting to take some really nice photos and update In The Kitchen, but haven’t. This is because I wanted to show you all our kitchen at it’s finest, at that moment when everything is finally unpacked and put away, and there’s not junk all over the countertops.

That moment will probably never happen. And it probably doesn’t matter.

We designed our kitchen to be used, to be lived in, to be livable. The cabinets are painted, the appliances are middle-of-the-line, the countertops are soapstone which is meant to get beat up and still look ok.

So here’s our kitchen in real life. This is it at it’s finest. With a little boy and his digger on the counter. With sun streaming in the windows. With Shane’s “Big Daddy” mug on the drying rack. With a big jug of olive oil on the counter. With the red enamel pot on the stove.

That’s our kitchen for real.

I didn’t plan to cook dinner tonight, nor did I plan not to cook dinner. This is hardly unusual. Shane and I just aren’t planners. I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just how we are.

How do we manage to get dinner on the table every night without a plan? It’s actually not a matter of planning*. It’s a matter of remembering (or keeping a list) and having an arsenal. That is to say, a list of foods you mostly always buy and an arsenal of quick recipes.

Here’s our list – 15 of the most basic of basics things you should try to keep on hand if you want to be able to throw a quick dinner together on a moment’s notice. I’m going to go ahead and assume you already have olive oil, butter, salt, pepper and flour.

1. Whole Peeled or Chopped Tomatoes in a Can
2. Pasta
3. Eggs
4. Trader Joe’s Handmade Flour Tortillas
5. Cheddar or Mozzarella Cheese (pre-grated is fine)
6. Parmesan or Pecorino Cheese
7. Salad Greens and/or Broccoli (but really the more veggies you have on the ready the better)
8. Eggs
9. Chicken Tenders (yeah, the raw kind) and/or Extra Firm Tofu
10. Garlic
11. Onions
12. Lemons
13. Seasoned Rice Vinegar
14. Rice
15. Panko Breadcrumbs

Tonight’s dinner was a perfect execution of the list and the arsenal method. Homemade Chicken Nuggets, Baked Tofu, Rice and the remainder of the salad from Saturday—which I had saved, un-dressed so we could have it again.

That’s all for tonight!

*Full disclosure: I have experimented with meal planning pretty extensively in the past. At this point in my life, it seems like too much work.

Oh hey look, I’ve made it 1/6 of the way through my challenge! Today I’m going to tell you a little about my day job, but first I’m going to tell you about dinner.

I love Fridays because I work a short day from home and then if all goes well I have time to do stuff, like cook dinner or take the cats to the vet. My goal is to make something special for dinner on Friday. And by special I mean something besides whatever-it-is-I-can-throw-together-in-30-minutes-because-that’s-all-the-time-I-have, which is what happens on all of the other weeknights.

Even with the extra time on Fridays, somehow I often end up not having time or forgetting to go grocery shopping. Tonight was one of those nights. Fortunately we had approximately 14 shrimp in the freezer, a massive head of cauliflower, and lemons. And since 99% of the time we also have olive oil & pasta, I was golden.

Regular readers probably think I have an odd proclivity for cauliflower. What can I say? It’s a hearty vegetable that soaks up flavor well and fills the void when everyone else is eating meat or fish. So yeah, we had cauliflower again. This time, just roasted with lots of olive oil & salt, lemon juice, lemon zest and a sprinkling of red pepper flakes. Yum.

For the kids and Shane, I made Shrimp Scampi. And we had a side of linguini. Shrimp scampi is super easy, this is my favorite recipe (you can skip the shallot and/or the parsley if you don’t have them) but this one is fine too, if you’re just serving it alone or with pasta and don’t need a lot of sauce.

So, do you still want to hear about my day job, or do you  just want to look at another picture of that cauliflower?

Enough about cauliflower! What I do for a living is design real estate marketing campaigns. So, my team and I, we brand buildings (as we like to say) all day, every day.

It’s a super interesting job that stays interesting because for each building we have to find a way to carve out a real personality, and try to get inside the heads of the people who will live of work there, and create a campaign that caters to them. Not who they really are necessarily, but who they aspire to be.

I love home. I love homes, all kinds of homes. Whenever I go somewhere, I fantasize about living there, and sometimes even seriously consider it—even though moving is my personal version of hell. In fact, I love looking at real estate so much that when Rose was little, she thought my job was “looking at houses on the computer.” For better or for worse. So this line of work is pretty much perfect.

Maybe the connection between the blog and my career has something about home? Or not. That’s ok, I still have 25 more days to figure it out.

Until tomorrow!

Ok, so. I’m not going to tell you more about why I’m doing this project. Not tonight. Sorry.

Instead, I offer you this glimpse into my husband’s food preference versus mine. Take a wild guess which plate belongs to which of us. Acutally, don’t even bother.

More on the posting challenge tomorrow. Promise!