Good morning. No cooking tonight. I want you to order a pizza from your favorite source for ordered pizza; or call in to the Chinese restaurant that’s pretty good; or pick up Indian food from the spot near the highway. You could get a rotisserie chicken. I suppose you could heat water for some blue-ribbon cup ramen (above). What’s important is that you build some time into your evening so you can do something radical: Clean out your fridge, freezer and pantry, in advance of Thanksgiving, just 10 days away.
I know! It’s a Monday. The week’s just getting started, and the last thing you want to do is weekend-style deep-cleaning. But you’re going to use your pique and impatience with this idea to work fast and with terrible force, like a speed-round Marie Kondo, to empty the freezer of all that you can barely remember putting in there in the first place, to empty the fridge of same, to find all the dead spices in the cabinet and eliminate them, creating room where they stood.
And then you can enjoy your delivery General Tso’s or tikka masala, sure in the knowledge that you’re ahead of the game. Catch up on your “Bosch.” Life’s good.
Tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrow, you can get back to the stove. I think this vegan mac and cheese would be a cool thing to make in the middle of the week, and I know it has enough flavor to blow minds. Pivoting hard toward dairy, I think I could make a meal of this baked Brie with quick cranberry jam.
Cauliflower gratin with leeks and Cheddar? I’d like to eat that! Linguine with tuna, arugula and capers? Likewise.
Definitely going to try to make chicken and shallots this week. Also, black pepper beef stir-fry with cabbage.
And on Thursday morning — for strength before the big Tesla pickup truck reveal we’ve been promised on the last day of the Los Angeles Auto Show — I’m thinking a big bowl of seeded pecan granola.
What else? I’ll browse through NYT Cooking for inspiration. You should do the same. (Yes, you need a subscription to do that. In return we’ll help you organize your recipes, rate them and leave notes on them, for yourself or others. We’ll show you how to send yourself grocery lists. We’ll teach you how to use your knives.)
Questions? Write us at cookingcare@nytimes.com. We’ll answer.
You can visit us on Facebook as well, where we are part of a growing community of home cooks. We’re on Instagram, too, and on YouTube. (You can find me, for what it’s worth, on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. You can write me at foodeditor@nytimes.com.)
Now, I loved this Kathryn Miles story in Down East, about chefs and scientists in Maine trying to deal with an invasion of green crabs by making them something people want to eat.
Speaking of magazines if not of food, Railway Modeller has “a Railway Modeller exclusive” this month. The glossy landed Rod Stewart for its cover, with an interview about his prized train set. Railway Modeller, I’ll have you know, is “Britain’s most popular model railway monthly magazine.”
See what you make of this reflection on NPR by Nina Martyris, about female chefs and the word “badass.”
Finally, take some time with these lovely portraits of the overnight shift at a Brooklyn bodega, by Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg, in The Times. I’ll be back on Wednesday.
