How to come up with new cooking ideas

It’s simple to come up with new cooking ideas. All you have to do is steal freely.

For example, the kale-pepper omelet you see above was inspired by an NPR story. In that piece, Allison Aubrey describes one psychologist’s recommended omelet recipe, which is essentially eggs, kale, and pumpkin seeds.

Now, I don’t have pumpkin seeds in my pantry, but I do have a bunch of frozen chopped kale from a sale at Aldi a while back, and so shortly after that NPR segment aired, I decided to give kale a shot as an omelet filler. I wished I had seeds to add, but that wasn’t a problem. Instead, I simply diced the remainder of the bell pepper we had put in the previous night’s dinner and called it good enough. No cheese, no mushrooms, no meat, nothing else.

And it tasted good! Mainly because I didn’t burn the eggs, and also because they were, you know, real eggs with green stuff and red stuff that provided good texture and reasonably interesting flavors. Kale tastes good. Bell pepper tastes good. By God, eggs taste good. Together, they make wonderful music.

Really, that’s the roughest outline of how I cook. When I’m feelin’ fancy, I pay attention to more subtleties, but usually, I just look for simple recipes online that I can adjust with whatever I have in the kitchen, matching fresh stuff with fresh stuff, unctuous with unctuous, et cetera.