A Good Idea from An Everlasting Meal: Precook Your Vegetables

I first read about this book in the Wall Street Journal. It was mentioned in a piece on leftovers, one of my favorite topics (no kidding). I put in a request at the public library, and--lo and behold--the nice bookbuyer ordered it. As it happens, there is only one idea in the book I really like: precook your vegetables for the week. I have been doing this for a while--caramelizing and freezing slow-cooker onions, roasting vegetables, making large vats of ratatouille--but I had never elevated it to a philosophy. What Adler points out is, that if you have a bunch of precooked vegetables, you can make dinner in a trice, since the vegetables are the hardest part, taking prep, chopping, etc. Her faves seem to be greens and roasted vegetables like cauliflower. You can make sandwiches with precooked veggies, throw cooked greens into a stir fry, and so on. She is especially fond of the sandwich idea, starting with toasted, garlic-rubbed bread Italian-style. WARNING: This isn't really a recipe book, but an idea book. There are SOME recipes. Adler takes as her model How to Cook a Wolf, by the great MFK Fisher. Maybe I've been reading too many student papers (make that definitely), but I have to say that Adler's prose doesn't do it for me. Her foreword is written by Alice Waters, famous foodie, and Alice presents these three sentences as examples of Adler's fine writing. Sentence 1 on eggs: Eggs should be laid by chickens that have as much of a say in it as any of us about our egg laying does. (REALLY? I don't have a say in whether I lay eggs or not.) Sentence 2 on leftovers: When we leave our tails trailing behind us we lose what if left of the thoughts we put into eating well today. Then we slither along, straight, linear things that we can be, wondering what we will make for dinner tomorrow. Sentence 3 on salting: The noodle or tender spring pea would be narcissistic to imagine it already contained within its cell walls all the perfection it would ever need. We seem, too, to fear that we are failures at being tender and springy if we need to be seasoned. It's not so: it doesn't reflect badly on pea or person that either needs help to be most itself. So, if you like the prose, read the book. In any case, PRECOOK YOUR VEGETABLES. THEN EAT THEM. (Sorry--still can't paragraph with the new template)