I do most of the family cooking, which probably comes as no surprise to anyone. I used to have a weeknight repertoire of about ten dishes, but a while back I got tired of making the same old, same old all the time, and I decided to branch out. I think it has changed our diets for the better, at the very least cutting down on how much red meat we eat and increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables. From a health perspective, that has to be a good thing. From taste and presentation perspectives, well, there have been some bumps in the road of learning, but we’ve come through mostly unscathed. Here are a few of the family meals I’ve cooked lately:

I decided to take my own advice and whipped up some garlic scape pesto, which I then spread on top of trout fillets and baked. I served the pesto trout alongside mashed potatoes and asparagus. It was a super-easy dinner.

I blame the fact that I broke the over-easy eggs for this breakfast on the fact that I’d been up since 5:00am in order to drive my mother to the airport. The statement, “I am not a morning person” does not even begin to touch how muzzy and uncoordinated I am when it’s early. Even so, I was back in time to see the kids off to school, and to make them up a hot breakfast of fresh-baked Dad’s biscuits, eggs, and fruit salad (bananas, strawberries, apples, and navel oranges). I can count on one hand how often I’ve been up early enough to cook breakfast before I send the kids off to school, and I honestly wish it was zero. They are old enough now to make their own cold cereal, microwave oatmeal, or toast — and I could not be happier.

For last night’s dinner I rifled through my pantry and pulled out some sauces I’d purchased ages ago, but hadn’t yet tried. I marinated the steak for about eight hours in Sempio Kalbi Marinade, then I threw it on the grill. It was delicious! It has an flavour that I recognize from the Asian fusion buffets around here. It also made the beef nice and tender. The mixed vegetables (carrots, sweet potato, snap peas, and garlic scapes) were steamed first, then lightly coated in Heinz Sweet Teriyaki & Ginger Vegetable Sauce, which I have never seen before and can’t even seem to find online. It was fairly good, although I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to buy it again. The kids really liked it, but they are big fans of anything teriyaki anyway.

I think that I need to continue to clean out my pantry and use up all of the “oh, that looks interesting” food purchases that I made and then promptly forgot about. If I’m lucky, all of those meals will be received as well as these three were.