[jyl]

Necessity is the mother of invention. That's the situation here sometimes, I get home, wife says I'm cooking dinner, kids are asking "where's dinner, Daddy", and the refrigerator has a bit of this and a bit of that. Yes, I always have stuff on hand to make some basic dishes, but I'm bored with making them. So the random stuff happens.

Actually, boredom is a big factor. I get interested in certain stuff, right now it is Indian food, but call it XYZ. The family doesn't necessarily want to eat XYZ 24 x 7, or even at all. But I don't necessarily want to make some standard dish I've made too many times. And I'm not likely to hunt up a recipe that isn't XYZ and that doesn't interest me, just to feed the family. That's not my job description - nor is ironing shirts - that stuff is my wife's job, although apparently no-one told her, or maybe I was supposed to get it in writing, because as it turns out I do most of the ironing too.

So the family can either enjoy some more XYZ, or endure some random invention, or feed themselves. Left to myself, I'm happy to eat tuna from a can, day after day.

Sometimes I can't be so doctrinaire. When I was into cooking spleens and pancreases from the Chinese market, I had to make a steady flow of family-friendly meals too. Once they figured out what the mystery meat was, they wouldn't touch it.