What to have for dinner is a conversation repeated all over the country every evening.

There’s a lot of “what do feel like?”, “what do you want?”, “what do we have?”.

Now the only surefire way around this is a trusty meal plan [although it does usually mean we just move that conversation to Sunday afternoon and get it all over and done with for one session!].

Or, I bite the bullet, and take responsibility for the week’s ideas ~ which means a paper and pen and a bunch of cookbooks or magazines and I pick out what looks good.

Last week my epicurean literary companions were Jamie Oliver’s 15-minute and 30-minute meal cookbooks. Now naturally these titles are somewhat of a misnomer ~ it’s more like 45 to 60 minutes and a good half-hour meals. The Mr blames the structure which reads along the recipe, rather than steps it out.

I’ve been a fan of Oliver since his Naked Chef days and there are quite of few of his books on our shelves. The Mr swears by his pasta-making techniques and I cook his Yorkshire puddings recipe without fail every time.

And despite the misleading titles, once you have conquered a JO quick cook, it gets easier second time around. So they are always worth keeping in rotation.

So today, I’m sharing a few of my favourites and ones they featured on the menu at Casa Lime Lane this past week. All were hits ~ plates and leftovers cleaned up.

• This gorgeous Greek chicken is certainly one of the easier ones ~ and makes for a great lunch, warm [for me at work] or cold [in the smalls' lunchboxes].
• These satay chicken skewers and noodles are a firm favourite. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve had it and I often cook the noodles to serve with other dishes. [We skip dessert. But you see our version in this post]
• Again, these lamb meatballs were surprisingly simple to make but had a great flavour and made for great lunch leftovers. And most of the ingredients are probably in the pantry.
• And more leftover goodness ~ warm and cold ~ from the cauliflower macaroni cheese, a version of which is here. This was a lovely, homey Friday night meal. Served with tossed salad, it had a lovely but not too rich taste.
• We also had the black bean burgers last week, although I couldn’t find a recipe online, which included black bean sauce in the burger mixture, tossed with honey [or rice malt syrup] and sesame seeds at the end of cooking. Delicious,

Are you a Jamie Oliver fan? Got a favourite recipe.