Simple Menu Planning
From
| February 11, 2009
In Coffee and Convo
Back when we were growing up in the South dinner wasn’t dinner without meat, potatoes and two or three other vegetables on the side. That’s enough to kill the cook, not to mention your waist. But how do you know what to serve with an entrée and feel good about calling it dinner?
When dinner is a hearty soup or stew, a skillet meal packed with vegetables or a meaty sauce with pasta, do you really need anything more alongside than a crisp green salad and a crusty roll?
With so many companies getting into the ready-to-eat salad craze, serving up a crisp green salad is so easy that it can barely be classified as cooking. Lettuce blends we’d never manage mid-week are available with the zip of a bag. Some brands even come with the dressing and croutons in the same package.
Lately we’ve been dropping the side dishes in favor of a simple green salad. Sometimes it feels like one of the best ideas we’d ever had. But every now and then, a twinge of old-fashioned Southern guilt sets in. What would Maw-Maw say?
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What you're saying..
I love your column in my newspaper, the Kansas City Star. I have 5 children, and desperation is about the only way I cook (or do anything, for that matter)!
Thanks so much,
--Linda Enright
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