How To Get New Cooking Ideas

Deciding what to cook day in and day out can be a challenge. It's easy to cook the same food over and over again but our families may get bored with it. Let's face it; some of us just aren't that creative when it comes to deciding on what dishes to cook. If we really take the time to think about it, we are surrounded by an abundance of dinner ideas.

1. Restaurants - Many dishes made at restaurants create excellent cooking ideas. Each dish on a menu is usually separated according to whether it is an appetizer, salad/soup, lunch, entrée or dessert. Some appetizers include Buffalo wings, mozzarella sticks, nachos, spinach dip, etc. All of these dishes can be quick and easy to make for your family or when entertaining a group of friends. The entrée menu is often broken down into chicken, beef, pasta and seafood. Under each entrée on the menu, the dish is either sautéed, broiled, stewed, roasted, marinated or slow-cooked, all of which are excellent ways to separately cook chicken, beef, pasta and seafood. This gives the cook an even wider range of meal choices. The entrée usually always come with a side order of vegetables to round out the meal. We cannot forget the salad/soup section. The various salads listed on a menu are excellent dishes that can be served before dinner. Many salads listed on restaurant menus have nuts (i.e. almonds), fruit (i.e. cranberries), and meat (i.e. chicken). What a nice change from your typical salad of greens, tomatoes and carrots.
2. Food Network Television - Food television is dedicated to everything food and caters to the cook. Food T.V. discusses everything from the origin and history of a dish to how the dish is made. The audience not only gets great new meal ideas but even an amateur cook is taught step-by-step exactly how a specific dish is made.
3. Magazines - Magazines geared toward families offer recipe ideas on a monthly basis. These recipes are usually located in the back of the book. Many of the recipes listed are healthy and fun. Even if you do not subscribe to these types of magazines, doctor's offices and other waiting room areas do. If you see a specific recipe you are interested in trying, do not be afraid to ask the receptionist. You can ask him/her if you can keep the book or even if you could just tear out the page(s) where the recipe is listed. They usually don't mind.
4. Look at Your Calendar - What does that mean? Set up a "Meal Rotation Schedule." The food dishes you discover from restaurants, food T.V., and magazines can be written on your calendar and rotated accordingly. For example, if on Monday May 14th, you make a chicken dish created from tasting it at a restaurant, you will not eat it that specific dish until two months or so from that date. Eating the same meal again will all depend on how you set it up in your "Meal Rotation Schedule."

The next time you wrack your brain and say to yourself that you just don't know what to cook, the answer may be a menu, magazine or television click away.