For the first time in seemingly forever, my calendar for this weekend is completely free. No dinner parties to plan, no wine tastings to host, no teenagers to babysit, no meetings to attend, no evening plans, early morning hikes, nothing. You know what this means, right?

Exactly.

It’s time to test some new recipes. I’ll spend a few hours tonight or Friday pouring through my cookbooks and binders and del.icio.us bookmarks and pull a few candidates to try over the course of the weekend. My goals are one dessert, one breakfast food, one hearty main dish and one side dish. If all goes well, I’ll be in leftover heaven for the next week.

It’s been a long, LONG time since I’ve made anything new from a recipe. Sure, the dinner party I held two weeks ago featured a beet salad and lamb shank main course which I never made before. But I chose those on the basis of what I had at home or would receive from my CSA delivery (which sadly, will end next week). I’m hoping to choose a recipe on the pure basis of “damn that looks good” and then try to find all the ingredients for it. I’ll try to document the process and results as well as I can (if I remember).

Ahh, an empty weekend to do nothing but relax, cook, bake and eat. Life is good.