My husband Michael and I had planned to go out for dinner the other night but at the last minute he had to attend a business meeting, so I was on my own with no food plans on the horizon.
It would have been easy to order in a pizza or go grab a burger or open a can of chili. Lots of people who eat alone do just that. Maybe you are one of them. But I want to encourage you to think of times like these as opportunities to let your culinary creative juices flow. That’s what I did. I looked in my fridge and said, “What can I use up and how can I make it delicious?”
This is what I call cooking “booke” – making up a dish from whatever you have on hand in your fridge and cupboards.
Not only can it be fun and satisfying to create a dish on the fly, I guarantee that it will be more nutritionally sound – fresh, less salt, fat, etc.
In my fridge that night I had a spinach/mozzarella sausage, a couple of mushrooms, an onion, some small yellow peppers, kale, white wine and a half-jar of Alfredo sauce. On the counter I had a dozen or so grape tomatoes shriveling in a container and a head of garlic.
So … if it were you, what would you do with these ingredients?
Well, a few options could be: If you had a tortilla or two in the fridge, you could make a pizza. Or if you had a can of white beans or garbanzo beans and some chicken stock in the cupboard, you could make a great soup.
Other ideas?? Let me know!
I chose to sauté the veggies, add in the sausage (sliced) along with a bit of white wine and some Alfredo sauce. Then I boiled brown rice penne pasta I had in the cupboard and tossed everything together. Oh. My. Gosh. It was delicious. I mean really, really delicious. 
I enjoyed this dish for many reasons:
1. It tasted great.
2. I used up bits and pieces of stuff from my fridge.
3. It was fresh and nutritionally balanced.
4. I created something new!
5. And, I affirmed to myself, once again, that “booke” cooking is the bomb.
Don’t be afraid. Don’t be lazy. Be brave and creative, and go cook some “booke”!
Eat well. Be happy.
Plynn Gutman 