Why "the menu drawer"?

My impulse to begin something, each time it has tugged at me, has never come to me as a single, linear force. More often, a confluence of sitting ideas and long-standing interests begin to flicker and then merge, forming a swelling tide that ultimately pushes me to do the thing it is that I want to do.

Launching The Menu Drawer was the same. Several factors and reasons have brought me to this write this blog.

1. I wanted to start something that is my own creation.
2. I love cooking.
3. I love writing.
4. There is no substitute for a homemade meal.
5. When I am tired and forget #4, I order food. It is always overpriced, and always leaves me unsatisfied, and then I remember why it's worth spending 20 minutes in the kitchen to have a homemade meal.

But, as a 20-something in New York City, is it really practical to cook for one or two people almost every night?

Yes - if you have a weekly menu.

Because:
1. With a menu, you can buy all the ingredients you need in one trip to the store.
2. With a menu, you know exactly what to do every night after work.
3. Menus can be created to use similar ingredients, so you waste less and save more (food and money).
4. Leftovers! (Read: The next day’s lunch, so you can keep the money for the $7.95 lunch special in your wallet.)

By writing this blog, I hope to inspire myself to continue to sift through food websites and cookbooks, to choose, try, and tweak recipes, and to be good to my body and eat well every day.

If you like to cook, but:
· find the process of getting organized to be time-consuming, or
· find grocery-shopping for one or two to be expensive,

then I hope that this blog, this drawer full of menus, makes cooking and eating well easier for you, by compiling recipes, using ingredients effectively, and providing a plan. Happy chopping, grilling, shredding, mincing, sautéing, mixing, pureeing, and best of all - eating!