I’m not an inspired cook. I do it each night only because, otherwise, I find that my kids get hungry.

The other night, it was almost dinnertime and yet there I was, sitting in front of my computer, messing around and wasting time. I knew I needed to get up and cook something but I was feeling sort of unmotivated. This happens sometimes. I feel as though I’m getting less “domestic” as I get older.

Then sun is starting to set and there’s an eerie blue glow on my face from the screen. I’m imagining what I look like to my poor hungry children. They are finished with their homework and are starting to swarm the computer table.

“What’s for dinner?” They keep wanting to know. Each of them. I don’t look up. I can’t face their poor little faces, their downcast eyes, their bowing bellies.

So I keep clicking and that’s when I somehow stumble, in a way that only the internet can make possible, this ridiculously useful website: Supercook.com. This site is my new very best friend.

This is the site that I’ve always wished existed: You type in the ingredients you have. I type chicken breast because that’s really just about all I have. The site presents me with a list of other ingredients. I click on them: garlic, rosemary (which, oddly enough, I do have in fresh, organic form because I bought it recently to make a recipe that was too long and involved and the expensive little sticks of rosemary ended up getting pushed to the back of the fridge.) So let’s see what else? Lemon. Yes. I have some dried-out looking lemons sitting right in front of me. They looked ever so pretty when I bought them to put in a bright blue glass bowl on the center of my table but now, they are just looking puckered and sad.

So then this site gives me links to 44 different recipes that I can make with those ingredients. I choose something called Grilled Tuscan Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon and when I click on the link it takes me to a Martha Stewart recipe website. Thirty minutes later we are grubbing on serious yumminess, and I feel triumphant.

This is so fun that I get a little cocky. I try something a little more obscure. Okay, supercook. I type in sweet potato. then I say I have brown sugar, orange juice and vanilla extract. What comes up? A Creamsicle Screwdriver. Woo hoo! Dessert! (Interestingly, I didn’t have a sweet potato. I was just testing. But I do have vodka so we’re all set.)

Note: momscape is not affiliated with Supercook.com We just like it.

Here are some recipe collections at momscape that you might like:
http://www.momscape.com/recipes