What's for Dinner?

When David and I got married he knew how to make 5 'homemade' things.  Stroganoff, Chili, Spaghetti, Lasagna, and Oatmeal Crispies.  He had recipes for these 5 items and still uses those recipes to make them whenever he cooks.  The recipes have evolved
somewhat over the years, but even though he says he could do it without reading the recipe, he always get s the book out to double check that he hasn't forgotten anything. 

For baking, I understand that.  For cooking - I can't think of the last time that I used a recipe to make a main course.  Certainly I have some good recipes for main dishes, but here's how it usually works at my house:

Get home from work.
Open the refrigerator to see what is in there that might become dinner. 
Open the freezer to check the same thing.
Think about what I had for lunch so I don't duplicate the starch.  (You know - like if I had rice and something for lunch I don't want rice and something for dinner).
Think about what has been in the refrigerator for a while and needs to be used.  (Don't even pretend you don't do that too!)

Decide to eat out.

Just kidding - I don't do that every time - just sometimes.

Interestingly, what happens is this:  I can usually create something pretty good, and generally I never make it again because I don't have those exact same ingredients to be used.

Case in point - Dinner last night.

I had left over Curry with rice for lunch.  So - no rice.  We are currently out of potatoes.  So that means noodles.  I have 2 boxes of rigatoni noodles in the pantry.  I don't know why.  We have quite a lot of cheese - which is a good thing, but some of it had been around for a while - so I started thinking about a sort of macaroni and cheese dish.  But I'm the sort of person who likes to have meat at suppertime uusually.   I had some frozen sliced spicy sausage that I bought because I had a coupon.  (With no idea what I would do with it - but I love spicy sausage so I thought - What the heck.)  I also bought a red pepper at the store because all of the vegetables in the middle of the winter are so boring, and a red bell pepper is so pretty.  It was starting to get a little wrinkly -

 I put the noodles on to boil, turned the oven on, chopped up an onion.  Sauteed the onion with some garlic - threw in half of the red pepper that had been diced along with about 5 stalks of asparagus.  Drained the noodles, added the veggies and meat into a bowl.  Made a roux in the sauce pan (less clean up), and then added some milk and about a half a cup of cream cheese (which I bought a while ago and hadn't done anything with) some grated parmesan, and some yummy gouda (the stuff that was getting sort of old) and made a cheese sauce.  Mixed everything together, popped it in the oven for a half an hour or so - and Yum Yum Yum. 

It just started me thinking about the whole meal process because honestly - the above is a pretty normal way for me to make dinner. 

When the kids were growing up David would often mention that we should make dinner together with them.  But when you're making a plan as you go, it's kind of hard to get others involved - unless you can get them to do your chopping for you. 

So dinner last night was great.  We probably won't ever have that exact same thing again.  Or we might - you never know.