Over the many years of my fascination with food, I’ve subscribed to numerous magazines. These included Gourmet, Food & Wine, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Cook’s Magazine, and Cook’s Illustrated. In fact, one of the first uses I had for a personal computer (25 years ago) was scanning and cataloging recipes I wanted to save. This activity preceded the Internet, but since those days, the explosion of food-related websites provided me and my fellow-foodies a limitless supply of valuable resources — recipes, techniques, video clips, equipment reviews, sources of supply, and much more. About a week ago I was browsing and came across the sites for America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated. A few of the recipes intrigued me enough, so I decided to subscribe. The next day I made Eggs Pipérade for breakfast, and it was the first of three superb meals I cooked just for myself on March 30th.

Breakfast

The recipe PDF is available in the link above.

It was a much more extensive breakfast than my usual fruit smoothie, fruit, or slice of toast with hummus, but the flavors were rich and delicious, and altogether delightful.

Lunch

When lunchtime came along, I was browsing the refrigerator and came across a head of romaine lettuce that needed to be used immediately. That led to a meal of:

• grilled romaine salad with chickpeas
• grilled sourdough bread with Sicilian anchovy
• a glass of Etna Bianco, Sicilian white wine

Dinner

It was my night to cook dinner, so I invented a vegetarian dish we could enjoy (and it would be vegan if you left off the Parmesan cheese). Here’s the recipe:

and what the dish looked like in the cazuela and on our plates. It also did a fine job using up leftover vegetables, such as the butternut squash, some broccoli florets, sweet red pepper, and Shiitake mushrooms. One big pleasant surprise was how well the chopped sun-dried tomatoes provided rich flavor and integration for it all.