6 Recipes That Do Not Require a Recipe
My favorite no fuss throw-it-together meals
Happy April, friends! As you read this, we are traveling from Louisiana to Oklahoma, most likely in the rain. 🙄
After a crazy three weeks of renovations and repairs, we are moving on. Does that mean we are finished with all of our projects? Nope! 😂 But we did manage to get all the big stuff done and will work to finish up the details this week.
I cannot WAIT to show you.
Also, remodeling an RV is a lot of work and we are very, very tired.
But, can I just say that it is astonishingly wonderful to know people who will let you park next to their home for 3 weeks (THREE WEEKS!) and share their power, water, home, and hearts while you work around the clock, take over their car port, use their power tools, their laundry room, and their bathrooms, and still want to eat dinner with you ever night?
May you all have a Jack and Marsha in your life. The world needs more of them.
Earlier this week, I spent an entire day in Jack and Marsha’s home cooking three of their favorite family recipes. I copied the recipes from spattered, wrinkled and worn hand written recipe cards and took photographs of everything before we ate it.
Those recipes will all be in next week’s issue and you will absolutely not want to miss them: Jack’s blue ribbon winning baked beans, Marsha’s pork jambalaya, and gooey persimmon pudding with custard sauce.
I am writing this on Thursday, having just edited the photos while eating the leftovers for lunch, and my stomach and taste buds are very, very happy. They are the kind of treasured recipes I love to discover - tried and true staples of home cooking that are so good they’ve been passed down through generations.
So, I guess all of you will get a little bit of Jack and Marsha too.
This week, I am sharing 6 of my favorite No Recipe Required meals
Scattered throughout the pages of the Let’s Get Lost Cookbook are 36 “no recipe required” dishes. These are for all of you throw-it-together people: they are more of an idea than a recipe and meant to be tossed together, all willy nilly, with whatever you have and whatever you like.
In addition to the recipes in the book, I try to include a No Recipe Required meal in most issues of this newsletter because I think they represent the way many of us like to cook. They are generally quick and easy and do not require any kind of precise measurements.
Earlier this week,
of the Cooking the Stacks newsletter decided to cook all eight of the recipes from last week’s issue. ALL EIGHT!She started with one of my all time favorite No Recipe Required meals - chicken enchiladas. Here’s what she had to say about those…
This inspired me to share some of the other No Recipe Required meals that I make over and over again.
Our daughter Anne has been staying with us and she devised the meal plan for this past week week and did much of the cooking. On the menu were three of the No Recipe Required meals on this list - Chicken Enchiladas, Braised Pork Chops, and Stuffed Flatbread. We ate all of it with Jack and Marsha on their covered patio and enjoyed these family favorites even more because everything tastes better when it’s eaten with friends. 🙂
If you’re looking for a few good throw-it-together meals to add to this week’s meal plan, I think you’ll find some good ones here.
*If you’re a paid subscriber, scroll down for downloadable pdfs for every one of these recipes.
Chicken Enchiladas. As is often true of the things I love the most, the brilliance of those enchiladas was in their simplicity. These super easy enchiladas take about 15 minutes to make and 20 minutes to bake. It’s also easy to make as many or as few as you like.
Simple Braised Pork Chops (recipe below). Dry, flavorless pork chops need not apply because these babies are more juicy and flavorful than a pork chop has the right to be. We like to eat these chops with cream cheese mashed potatoes or crispy fried potatoes.
Stuffed Flatbread. While you do need to follow the recipe below to make the flatbread dough, it's not important to be super exact in your measurements and you can fill these pockets of deliciousness with anything your heart desires.
Crispy Corn Tortilla Quesadillas. These crispy, cheesy quesadillas only take about 5 minutes each and are such a favorite in our house that we eat them at least once a week, and often more than that.
White Beans on Toast with Veggies and Greens. White Beans on Toast is one of my favorite nutrition packed things to make with a humble pot (or can) of beans and a handful of veggies.
Anchovy and Olive Oil Pasta. This is one of those super quick and delicious meals that I almost always have the ingredients for. Most of the ingredients are pantry staples, and it’s truly the kind of thing for which you can substitute in anything you have or anything you like.
Simple Braised Pork Chops
From the pages of Let’s Get Lost, the Cookbook.
Highly Recommended
Cooking the Stacks by
is a newsletter I highly recommend. “Each week, I pick a foodie stack I admire. I cook or bake from it through the week, recounting a snapshot of my adventures here for you. Instead of cooking the books, it’s Cooking the Stacks!”This week, Shell chose my recipes and it was an absolute honor to see her post photos every day of the meals she made for her family. Subscribe to see what she’s making next!
See you next week, friends!
—> For past issues and recipes, scroll through the archives or the recipe indexes - 2024 recipe index, 2025 recipe index.
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