I just finished watching the movie Julie & Julia, a truth-inspired tale as Julie Powell decides to cook all 524 recipes outlined in Julia Child’s culinary classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Cooking and being creative in the kitchen is something that I enjoy myself, and I loved the movie. It made me think about my views on cooking and reconsider some of those views, especially about preparing dinner for my family from a box dinner. I am usually opposed to cooking dinner from a box, opting instead for home cooking, cooking from scratch. I’m not saying that I never cook from a box, but I try to give my family something that everyone will enjoy. I feel like I have shorted my family in some way if I give them dinner from a box, instead of something I’ve slaved over for at least an hour. After watching the movie, and preparing last night’s dinner, I thought — who cares if dinner came from a box, the whole point is that it tastes good and everyone enjoyed the meal.

One of the the items I purchase at Aldi to speed things along for dinner, and make things simple is their Reggano Stroganoff Skillet Dinner. The dinner by itself tastes fine, we’ve had it several times in the past, but last night I went above and beyond the ingredients that are called for. I sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil, and then added ground turkey along with a little salt and pepper. After the meat, onions, and garlic were done I then continued to follow the directions on the box to finish the meal. Traditional stroganoff calls for sour cream so I tossed a spoon of that into the mixture as well. What I didn’t think about until later is that I could have thrown mushrooms, and other herbs into the mix as well. I was impressed with the results of the stroganoff, and more importantly, so was my family.

As I’ve written before, we drink skim milk on a daily basis, so I keep Half & Half on hand for mixing with our skim milk to provide something close to whole milk. In the case of this dinner I put a little more Half & Half than milk in the mix because I know that it creates a thicker cream when it’s cooked down, and the Half & Half did not fail on it’s end. I have prepared the recipe with skim milk in the past, and the cream sauce works fine with the skim milk, but if you want a thicker texture to the sauce, use something more than skim in the recipe.

Don’t just think of the box as the meal, think of it as the base for a great meal. Add your favorite herbs, spices, and vegetables to the mix to create something your family will ask for again. My favorite part is that I don’t feel guilty about serving stroganoff from a box to my family after preparing last night’s dinner, and getting a new insight on cooking from watching the Julie & Julia movie. Thank heavens for movies!

In our quest to come up with new and exciting things to offer our family to eat, my husband had the brilliant idea of making crepes for dinner one evening after watching Giada De Laurentiis. I was a little hesitant because I’ve seen them made several times on The Food Network, and it looks difficult. My husband actually took on the task of making the crepes and I was impressed with his skill of turning out great looking crepes. I’ve given him the official title of “Crepe Maker” until I am brave enough to try the process myself.

The crepes are a simple recipe requiring only five ingredients: eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and salt. The ingredients are pantry staples and lend themselves to an inexpensive meal. The recipe calls for whole milk, we only drink skim, but I keep half and half in the refrigerator for cooking purposes so we mixed some skim and half and half to get the milk fat to the right proportion. Once you have the crepe batter prepared and ready for filling, the possibilities are endless. We made savory crepes since we were eating dinner, but I can’t wait to try these for dessert as well.

Our filling for our dinner crepes was a combination of chicken, peas, garlic, onions, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. We sauteed the chicken, garlic, and onions in olive oil along with the salt and pepper, and tossed in some frozen peas for color and flavor. Once the crepe was cooked on one side, we flipped it over to continue cooking the other side. While it was still cooking, we placed the filling in the middle of the crepe and topped with parmesan cheese so that the cheese would begin to melt. Once the second side is finished cooking (less than a minute), roll the crepe and place it on your plate. Enjoy!

As a side note: I want to mention that mixing the half and half and skim milk isn’t an exact science for me. I am not attempting to be perfect to get the correct ratio of half and half and skim milk; I just eyeball it. Since I know that half and half has a high milk fat content (10-18%) and skim milk has less than one percent milk fat, I know that mixing the half and half and the skim milk will get me somewhere close to whole milk which has a milk fat content of around 3.25%. I’ll let you have fun and figure out what ratios work for you.