I’m the kind of person who orders the same thing at a restaurant every time. (Mostaccioli al Forno at Casa de Angelo’s, EVERY SINGLE TIME, for instance.) I enjoy great food, but I also enjoy a sure thing when it comes to food. If I’m starving and the meal isn’t what I expected it to be, I get super grouchy. (My old co-workers once upon a time used to know this when DQ would screw up my afternoon Blizzards. It’s NOT a pretty picture.)

It’s not a surprise then, when it comes to cooking meals for my family, I have a few hits that I am comfortable with making and pretty much put them on repeat in the weekly rotation. I was ok with it, but John was pretty bored with the same handful of meals. I wanted to try new recipes, but honestly, I’m trying to run my own business with minimal babysitting help so I’m lucky to keep my head above water around here most days and by dinner time, I’m just craving my old standards.

Then came the October issue of Real Simple. John spotted the article about 30 recipes for 30 days and accepted the challenge to try every one for the next month. I was skeptical. I mean, some of the recipes look kind of weird, but I decided to be open minded. Plus, John said he would do all the grocery shopping for this project. (YESSSS!)

So, we are a couple weeks into this project and have had some AWESOME dinners that are easy and take an average of 30-40 minutes to make. One meal even made John teary eyed he loved it so much. I guess the vision of his wife cooking a new meal that was off the beaten path was just too much for him to take. 😉 (It has been really nice to step outside the box and I have been quite surprised at how tasty all these “weird” dishes are.) Oh, and as a bonus, they are healthy and have gotten some things into our diets that we hadn’t considered before, like chard, goat cheese, bok choy and parsnip.

I wish I had photos of the actual food, but honestly, I’m not the type to pause and take in a plate of good food for it’s beauty. It’s going down and it’s going down fast.

So if you are like me and could use some easy, non-weird meals that sit a bit more on the gourmet side of the food pyramid than the Kraft Mac N Cheese side, check out the October issue of Real Simple.