This past weekend I was a busy cook. I made nachos on Friday night.  Saturday morning I realized that I needed muffins to go with my coffee. On Sunday afternoon I made quinoa salad and on Sunday evening I made granola. I also did a lot of dishes this past weekend. Go figure.
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I've had a lot of different people ask for the various recipes because of this cooking. Now, most of the time I am not a recipe person so I am generally not the best person to ask for a recipe. That and you don't really need a recipe to make a tomato and veggie sauce to pour over noodles nor do you need a recipe to stir fry veggies to eat with rice. These dishes just require fresh produce and a little chopping time.

This said, I can cook and bake and follow a recipe. These days I don't own a cookbook. I don't really see the point living abroad. Half of the time I just whip up whatever is fresh, the other have of the time I eat leftovers or go out to dinner. In whatever time that's left remaining, sometimes I'll decide to actually cook.

When I decide to cook my go to blog is <a href="macheesmo.com" target="_blank">Macheesmo.com</a>. I read it religiously whether or not I am actually planning on cooking. I adore Macheesmo and Nick the brains behind this blog is one of my best friends from the years I lived in Washington DC.<!--more-->

We shared a kitchen in a group house for a number of years. For the most part, I ate what he cooked and teased him when he used more than his fair share of the burners on the stove. Cooking is never easy when you have four other roommates and one stove. So  sometimes you just make a salad rather than wait for your turn to cook.

Anyhow, as a result of the years we lived together, I trust Nick implicitly and I assume that if Nick cooked it so can I.  These days I can basically find anything that I want to make on Nick's blog.

The nachos are a work in progresses--I'm trying to make the perfect batch. So, those came from a combination of two (or maybe three different recipes). I went for ground beef with <a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2012/04/homemade-taco-seasoning/" target="_blank">this taco/nacho seasoning mix</a>. I made<a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2011/10/sunday-night-nachos/" target="_blank"> this cheese sauce</a> and I topped the whole thing off with <a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2012/05/the-homemade-trials-salsa/" target="_blank">homemade salsa</a>.

The muffins? Well I wanted to make a wild berry muffin but he didn't have a recipe exactly for this so I took <a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2011/01/lemon-yogurt-muffins/" target="_blank">the lemon yogurt recipe and adjusted it</a>. Basically, I left out the lemon and stirred in some frozen fruit. Luckily muffins are a pretty forgiving baked good.

And the granola, I took <a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/2011/03/kitchen-sink-granola/" target="_blank">the kitchen sink granola</a> and halved the recipe. It was a good thing I did too or I would have had to cook the granola in two different batches and then I'd be eating granola on and with everything. As it is my half batch created a pretty significant amount.

The only thing I didn't use Nick's blog for was the quinoa salad and that's mostly just because a college friend sent me a different one which I read and then totally changed because I didn't have any of the ingredients. These things happen.

I can't help but wonder if I feel like cooking because fall is sneaking in. Others? Are you cooking more with the arrival of fall?