Puff pastry with Swiss cheese, bacon and asparagus. Over the past months, I have enjoyed cooking with ingredients readily found in my well stocked pantry or fridge. Using either canned, fresh or frozen vegetables, with occasional left-overs, meals rarely required a last-minute outing to our nearby grocery store.  With some intuition it is fun to combine flavors, textures, and colors and even meet the challenge to cook dishes in less than twenty minutes, from start to seating.

I know, the title twice-baked potatoes seems all too familiar. We have favorite double or twice-baked foods: twice-baked potatoes, New York style cheesecake, Zwieback (zwei in German meaning two, and back[en] meaning to cook, similar to American Melba toast), Italian Biscotti, and even biscuits a word which comes from the “French derived from Latin bescuit—words bis (twice) and coquere (to cook).” Many ways of being twice-cooked.

Ratatouille and Indian coconut curry shrimp. How often have I returned home and craved specific exotic flavors, even though the dishes didn’t make sense as a combination. Confronted with preparing the menu in my mind, my excuse was always that too many different ingredients needed to be purchased, or worse, that time was of the essence. Hence, I would mosey to a favorite Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese restaurant, or stay home and cook a favorite staple dish.