I am a big fan of default dinners. A concept I came up with years ago---to highlight family favorite meals, proven winners and regular dishes that appear on your/my/our weekly table. I will soon be offering a 'Default Dinners' cooking class and workshop. It is a 3 class series.

I go to people's homes (or they come to mine), and I teach 3-6 friends new recipes to add to their list of family's favorites - from my own default dinner list. Beyond learning new entrees that have the potential to become a regular on their table, this default dinners 'workshop' is about helping attendees capture and organize their OWN default dinner list. We write down their list of well-loved, already proven go-to meals. Participants are asked to list their current top 5 go-to meals and then we go from there---including swapping recipes. It's the perfect way to capture your best recipes and add to your growing list of go-to meals.

I am always on the look-out for dishes that make the cut, entrees to add to my default dinner list. I am proud of my list of family favorite meals: I guard it and tend to it like it is a garden. Which means I weed it and prune it, tweak it and ogle it with pride. It evolves and changes and inevitably, certain dishes float up to the top five. My current most frequented five (MFF) dishes are:

1. Turkey Sausage Meatballs

2. Chicken Enchiladas

3. Mushroom Risotto

4. Mushroom Lasagna

5. Fish Cakes

I am always trying new dishes, attempting to add to our family's growing list of default dinners. Some fall out of favor, only to be noticed again months later (part of the benefit of logging your favorite recipes: none will be forgotten, they will be accounted for and archived in an ever-growing log of your family's favorites). To be fair, a lot of recipes never make the cut. Other recipes smack of: "where have you been all my life?" And so it goes in our forever file of family-approved recipes.