Philosophy Friday: Recipe Paralysis

Geez, where has the week gone? Friday already! I hope you’ve had a nice week!

I opened the fridge today and noticed that one of my yellow zucchinis had just hours of life left, and needed to be used then and there. I thought about the dozens and dozens of zucchini recipes I’ve collected over the years. I thought about opening my overflowing recipe binder and looking through all those recipes…assessing each one, deciding if it sounds appealing…determining if I have all the ingredients…etc.

I can easily spend an hour looking through multiple recipe books, comparing ingredients and methods, trying to decide what I should do with the food in my fridge. Does this sound familiar to you? Maybe it’s only me. Sometimes, I get totally paralyzed by my recipes.

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Of course, I do LIKE recipes, which is why I have so many, 🙂 but sometimes enough is enough and I just need to cook the darn food already.

So today I opted to go recipe-free as I sometimes do, and ended up with such a delicious dish that I snarfed it all down before I even remembered to take a picture of it. Above, though, you can see a picture of me preparing it! Ha! (And trying to keep my foot elevated at the same time. 🙂 ) I forget how freeing it is to go without a recipe!

All I did was saute some thinly-sliced zucchini with chopped onions in some olive oil, till soft. Then I added only salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. How can something like that taste so good?!!

No recipe, no measurements, no fuss…nothing more than combining simple ingredients that go well together. Maybe you could call it “cooking intuitively,” but it’s something that I’m definitely going to do more often!