Steak with Winter Wheat Berry Salad with Figs & Red Onion and Fennel and Radicchio Winter Salad with Pecans.

Left out the honey (by mistake) in the farro salad and substituted two shallots for the red onion. I also tossed in some feta that was hanging out in the fridge — I’d guess it was about six ounces.

Zuni Cafe’s roasted chicken, the Smitten Kitchen version. “Farro Salad With Roasted Mushrooms and Parmesan” from Food52. Roasted broccoli with lemon.

Two things: the chicken is incredible. The skin is utterly perfect. I don’t usually eat chicken skin but this was irresistible. Secondly, the farro salad is also super. I was nibbling away at it while I made the chicken. I decreased the olive oil (and used a fairly high-quality one), increased the parmesan and I wish I’d bought more mushrooms. I think this could easily take another half-pound of mushrooms to become more of a mushroom salad with farrow and parmesan.

“Beef and Barley Stew with Mushrooms” from Simply Recipes. “Cauliflower with Mustard-Lemon Butter” from Epicurious.

Dinner tonight was a Real Dinner. Stew with melty-soft chunks of beef and roasted cauliflower so wonderful that I’m glad I had already packed away the rest of the dish, otherwise I might have gone back for seconds, thirds and possibly eaten the entire head.

I kept both recipes mostly the same, although I only casually measured the ingredients for the stew. It’s likely that I inadvertently increased all of the vegetables. In addition to turnip, I also added a fennel bulb as suggested by one of the recipe’s commenters. Really enjoyed this additional. I didn’t use sour cream.

Unfortunately, Real Dinners have become a little few and far between recently. I’ve lately been feeling a little uninspired when it comes to eating and then there’s this matter of going back to Real College: balancing 36-hour work weeks during the day with nine credits at night. Thankfully, this stew has not only fed me tonight but has also put a total of five additional meals into the fridge and freezer.

Flank steak with “Hashed Brussels Sprouts with Lemon” from Simply Recipes and “Parsnip Purée with Olive Oil and Sage” from French Revolution Food.

I made the side dishes fairly faithfully, making only minor changes for convenience or carelessness. Both were quite good, although I’d definitely put the Brussels sprouts ahead of the parsnip purée in order of excellence. The texture of the parsnips wasn’t quite right for me; they were a little too wet despite my cutting back on olive oil.

Lemon-thyme rubbed pork chop with spinach-walnut pesto. Very adjusted version of “Mustard-Roasted Potatoes” from Smitten Kitchen. Brussels sprouts with pancetta.

Filet mignon with mustard compound butter and roasted potatoes with lemon and dill.

Meat and potatoes. Nothing green except that handful of chopped dill. It’s a little shocking, I know. But also very good. Habits should not be made of food like this.

Rotini with broccoli rabe and caramelized shallots. Eaten with grated Piave vecchio.

My enthusiasm for Pasta With Stuff has not waned. Perhaps I’m making up for lost time: over a year of eating almost-exclusively within one or two cuisines can do that to a girl. Variety being the melange of life or something like that. And you know, she who controls the spice…

Caramelizing the shallots (two large ones) took the longest time but it gave the dish a nice, slightly deeper flavor. Once they were done, the rest took as long as it takes to cook the pasta. I added some red pepper flakes to the broccoli rabe while I was sautéing it and once the pasta was mixed in with the vegetables, I added the juice of half a lemon. The flavors worked for me, plus I had a lemon (sans zest) that needed to be used.

I used about two-thirds of a bunch of broccoli rabe for a half-box of rotini. I would have preferred a higher ratio of rabe to rotini, so I would suggest using a whole bunch. Adding some Italian sausage to this would also be excellent but I might skip the lemon in that case. It was also very satisfying as a vegetarian dish.

Pasta with sautéed zucchini, basil and lemon. Long beans with toasted breadcrumbs.

It’s hard to not shop impulsively when everything at the farmers market looks so good. Early yesterday afternoon, as I found myself strolling around the Union Square Greenmarket, one of the things I ended up buying was a rather large bunch of basil for $3. This is a fairly irregular purchase for me and for a second I almost didn’t buy it. In fact, I put it back. Would I use it all? As a single person, I feel like that’s often one of the Big Questions: can I finish this by myself? I could have found smaller bunches at another stand but I was already buying these lovely variegated zucchinis and the long beans (and the eggplants)… So I ran down some dinner ideas in my head and decided I could work it out.

I got it home, put it in water and set it in the fridge. Whenever I open the door, the scent of basil wafts out. It’s hard not to put it in everything and far too easy to linger in front of the open fridge. I worked the basil into every cooked meal since I bought it: I used it in last night’s panzanella; I added some to this morning’s potatoes, which were incredible by the way; and tonight it worked really well with the zucchini and lemon. My rather large bunch is more normally sized now.

At least as far as this week and this basil goes, I think I know the answer to the Big Question. Yes, I can eat this every day and not get bored. I will finish it by myself.

Roasted shrimp with linguine and a small salad with lemon-white miso dressing.

The shrimp was roasted with lemon and lime zest, giving it a slightly sweet and citrusy flavor. It was then tossed with the linguine, half of a juiced lemon, a splash of lemon and salt to taste. Eaten with a little Piave vecchio on top. While I was making dinner, I also macerated some blackberries in lime juice and a little sugar to eat over vanilla ice cream later.

I’ve actually made several dinners since my last post but they’ve been enormous salads eaten out of a mixing bowl. This is the summer I finally embraced the idea that salad can be dinner. I turned on my stove once during the heat wave and that was to cook a piece of wild sockeye salmon, which I then flaked into one of the aforementioned enormous salads. The kitchen’s subsequent rise in temperature was worth it.

“Soy-Stewed Bits of Beef (Gyūniku No Tōza Ni)” from Elizabeth Andoh’s Washoku. Eaten donburi style. Leftover “Lemon-Simmered Kabocha Squash (Kabocha No Sawayaka Ni)” from Washoku. Two sticks of very unnatural-looking hajikami (pickled ginger shoot).

I substituted tofu shirataki for the regular shirataki that the recipe called for. Sometimes it’s good to use what’s already in the larder.