Cooking for the Week: Leisurely Weekend Cooking for Easy Weekday Meals

Smart cooks know that leftovers are a good thing. An empty refrigerator dooms the cook to a tiresome trip to the store, the agony of starting from scratch for each meal, or worse: night after night of soulless, expensive take-out. But with a little planning ahead, a hearty weekend meal can provide several delicious meals throughout the week. In Cooking for the Week, weekend dinners are designed to provide plenty of leftovers, which are then used in clever weekday recipes. And these weekday meals are no dried-out rehash: leftovers are creatively transformed into stir-fries, salads, soups, pastas, fajitas, sandwiches, and other delectable reincarnations. Each weekend menu is tied to three or four weekday dishes, so planning a weeks worth of family meals is easier than anyone ever imagined. Cooking for the Week gives you a plan that makes it possible to eat well, feed the family, and spend weekday evenings relaxing instead of running around. Now thats a great idea!

Kathleen Taggart along with Dan Taggart, and Diane Morgan, authors of The Basic Gourmet, met while teaching at a Pacific Northwest culinary school. Their book Entertaining People won an IACP award. All three live and work in the Portland area.

Kathleen Taggart along with Dan Taggart, and Diane Morgan, authors of The Basic Gourmet, met while teaching at a Pacific Northwest culinary school. Their book Entertaining People won an IACP award. All three live and work in the Portland area.

Leigh Beisch is a San Francisco based photographer. Her work has appeared in many national fashion, lifestyle, and health magazines, as well as in Chronicle Books' Skewer It! and Cooking for the Week.