I didn’t plan for this week to look like a set. I was just cooking - Monday through Sunday, with the fridge emptying and the light in the kitchen window getting shorter every evening. But by the end of it I had six pictures I liked, and when I lined them up they looked like a week.
Monday was gnocchi. I’d meant to make something lighter and then the mushrooms made me change my mind. I browned them hard, tore in some rotisserie chicken I had left over from the weekend, wilted in spinach, loosened the whole thing with cream and a little pasta water. Into bowls. My husband tipped his bowl to get the last of the sauce, which is the highest compliment he knows how to pay.
Tuesday was a pork chop with red onions and a small crowd of fingerlings I’d cut into halves. I’d never done pork with onions like that before - cooked them long enough to go syrupy and then let them pile on top of the meat - and now I think about that move a lot.
Wednesday was what I think of as Wednesday food: white rice, a quick stir-fry with snow peas and chicken in a peanuty, sesame-forward sauce that I made up out of what was in the door of the fridge. It was the kind of dinner you can eat in about nine minutes while reading a thing on your phone. Sometimes that’s the whole assignment.
Thursday was salmon over dill cream with asparagus and little potatoes. This one I plated carefully because I liked the colors - the pale green of the asparagus, the pink of the salmon, the flecks of dill. It tasted the way it looked, which is nicer than the other way around.
Friday I didn’t cook. I don’t remember what we ate; probably cereal.
Saturday was Thanksgiving with just the two of us, which is my favorite kind of Thanksgiving. Turkey we’d roasted on Friday for the leftovers (there’s always a plan), mashed potatoes made with too much butter, stuffing with crispy top, brussels sprouts blackened at the edges, a pond of gravy. I didn’t photograph any of the cooking - only the plate, because I wanted to remember what one plate of it looked like.
Sunday was shrimp in a thin garlicky sauce over angel hair with the last of the asparagus from Thursday and a few cherry tomatoes, because I needed dinner to clear the fridge and nothing clears a fridge like a pasta.
Six plates, one week. Nothing fancy. I miss some of them already.
