When I was little and learning to play the piano, there was one song that I loved more than any other, and I played it constantly. So much so, that just playing it became kind of pedestrian, and I had to do something to jazz it up…. So I timed myself, to see how fast I could play the piece from beginning to end. It came out sounding just as you would expect a song to sound that a 6 year-old was speed-racing her way through, but I had to do something to make it challenging, and speed was my handicap of choice.

Skip ahead a couple of decades, and I’m not exactly the little pianist hellion banging away on the keys with no thought other than speed…. But, I’m not that far away from her, either. Nice 10 mile commute to work? I’ll ride my bike. Beach read? I’ll take Sophie’s Choice over Sophie Kinsella. Friends over for a work-night dinner? I’ll flake out and make this pan-seared salmon with luscious green sauce, which takes 30 minutes if I’m slow and 15 minutes if I’m in crazy speed-demon mode.

In a thoroughly unsurprising development, the holiday season has left me with less time than I’d like to do the things I enjoy most – namely putter around the kitchen and cook. I eat out too much, go to too many parties, and order delivery too often in an effort to save time for gift-wrapping, which inevitably takes 5 times longer than it takes the average all-thumbed clutz, that I end up cooking less during this home and hearth-oriented season than usual.

And, quite frankly, eating out so much sounds fun, but it is a bit off-putting. I like my own cooking, I like creating something, I like knowing what goes into it, I like being in my kitchen and doing the familiar dance around my pantry and stove, and not doing it makes me feel out of sorts.

For those of you that think that vegetarian dinners consist of greater amounts self-righteousness than flavor, let alone decadence, meet the Veggie Popover and…. Eat. Your. Hearts. Out.

Hearty veggies steeped in a deep, rustic wine sauce, baked inside a flaky, buttery pastry shell and drowned in a gorgonzola cream sauce obliterate any notions that vegetarian dinners are an ersatz gourmet experience. Every bite is more delicious and satisfying than the last, and if you also happen to feel a little self-righteous for getting so many veggies into your diet, all the better.

There are certain kitchen tasks that, no matter how simple, always reduce my ego and perception of my own mental capacity to the size of a child. For example, basting a turkey…. It’s quite simple, really. You just dip the tip into some of the juice, squeeze the little rubber-thingy, and distribute the juice over the turkey. Simple, right? But, somehow, I always end up choking on the heat of the oven, bump my head tellingly against the oven door, can’t quite get the juice into the baster (at which point it makes that hideous slurp-slurp noise), jab at the turkey senselessly, causing it to lose far more moisture than I ever intended to put in, and usually give myself a nasty burn.

It’s not the prettiest dish, but it smells and tastes fantastic.

I am not a fan of ‘cooking-lite.’ If I’m going to do something, I want to do it right, even if it means carrying around a little extra junk in my admittedly full trunk.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I have a total disregard for health or that I’m cramming slices of bacon and hunks of cheese into my mouth all day long. Quite the opposite, it’s just that I would prefer a smaller portion of something that tastes fantastic than a heaping plate of something that tastes so-so.

That being said, scrolling through Besotted, I did notice that there were an awful lot of bacon-y, cream-laden, cheesy, and chocolate-y recipes. At the same time, the seasonal winter-weight-gain has had my pants fitting a bit snugly, and I thought it was time to include a completely healthy, but still rock-your-world delicious Weeknight Dinner recipe.