Sometimes, I have some ingredient left over from a previous meal, or I’m looking for new inspiration in the kitchen, and I want to use a specific ingredient. That’s when I turn to my favorite cooking app. The app for Allrecipes.com comes with some great features, but the main one I use is the search feature. Now, I’m sure plenty of cooking apps have that option, but I’ve been using this app for a couple years now, and I’ve built a nice little collection of “favorites” to try.

Monday night, I had about a pound of boneless pork loin. We also had an abundance of peanut butter. So I searched in the app and found a recipe for pork in peanut sauce. I had most of the ingredients, but the recipe called for fresh, minced ginger. I hadn’t worked with ginger before so I bought a small piece that I hoped would cover the two teaspoons I needed. Dinner turned out great, but I had probably three teaspoons of the ginger left over and no idea what to do with it.

Last night, I had ground turkey, potatoes, and the ginger. Most of the results for all three required whole turkey, so I decided to just search on turkey and ginger. When two different recipes came up for turkey burgers, I decided burgers and fries were the order of the day. I made a few modifications, so we had turkey burgers seasoned with garlic and ginger, topped with horseradish cheddar, balsamic ketchup, coarse ground mustard, and mixed greens. On the side, there were tangy baked potato wedges. I made one mistake when I read the recipe and accidentally added the oil to the burger mixture instead of the pan. So I used our grilling pan with the raised ridges and everything turned out fine.

I was missing a few ingredients here and there, but Cathy and I didn’t really notice. I did have fun reminding her about the fact that all I do lately is cook from scratch, so she should be more appreciative. While I was just entertaining myself with teasing her, I was also fascinated with the notion, that I have come to a point where I rarely rely on ready-made, packaged food anymore when I’m cooking. That’s actually kind of exciting. More work, to be sure, but liberating as well. Enjoy!