The Rules:

1. No specialty ingredients. If it isn't a staple, won't be used in its entirety in one dish, won't be used in at least one other dish this week, or doesn't have a shelf life of a few months, I'm not buying it.

2. Fresh is better, but price is king. Whenever possible, I will choose fresh, unprocessed ingredients, but if it's cheaper to buy it frozen or shelf stable (like frozen green peas or juice), then sorry, my wallet wins the day.

3. Waste Not, Want Not. Put simply, my goal is to NEVER throw away good ingredients just because I never got around to using them up. No more 1/2 cartons of strawberries or mushrooms. No more mold ridden blocks of cheese. No more random pints of sour cream or bags of mushy herbs or blackened bananas.

4. Cook on Sunday. I have a job, a house, a husband, a dog, and two kids - I don't have time to cook during the week. Anything that is made on a weeknight must be able to be made in less than 20 minutes (take that, Rachel Ray!); otherwise, my only goal is to dish, heat, and serve.

5. Use what you've got. This is more of an extension of Rules 1, 2, & 3 rather than its own rule. The basic idea is that I don't live and die by recipes. If I'm supposed to use balsamic vinegar, but all I have is red wine vinegar, oh well. Cheese is cheese. Oil is oil. Pasta is pasta.

6. The kids have to eat too. These aren't supposed to be "grown-up" meals, but they aren't so flavorless and simplistic that only someone with the palate of a 2 year old could enjoy them. My daughter has always been good about eating variety of foods, whatever is put in front of her. I love that, and I want it to filter over to my son (who is the very definition of 'picky' right now!).

7. Keep it square. Vegetables, proteins, and carbs. I strive to provide a balance of flavors, colors, and ingredients. This is a little bit of everything kind of cooking. 

And that's it. Of course, not everything I make will be from scratch, and a lot of this experiment will be a learning exercise for me on how to make this concept work. But, in the end, I'm just happy that I'm doing one of the things that I love to do and that I get to share it.