Most of us, even those who rarely cook, have a fallback recipe or two, those dishes you've made so many times you know all the steps and ingredients by heart and can whip them up on a moment's notice.

But if your repertoire is limited to, say, lentil soup, or pasta with puttanesca sauce, I'd like to offer you a baker's dozen of wonderful, easy-to-prepare-but-tasty recipes to add to your arsenal, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.

The article, "Ridiculously Simple and Crazy Good,” offers recipes for everything from appetizers to desserts, and half a dozen entrees. What they have in common are “ingredients that are easy to find, if they're not in your kitchen already…you don't need to drag your wicker basket across town to stalk the organic farmer's market either-the items are right there in the aisles of your nearest supermarket.”

The “fast, easy and utterly reliable” recipes include: a salad with roasted beets and goat cheese; sweet pea soup; halibut (or salmon) Provençal; roasted asparagus; poached pears; and baked stuffed apples. All very elegant (and healthy, too!), but effortless to prepare.

I'm eternally clipping-or printing out-recipes from newspapers, thinking I'll give them a try. But half the time, I never get around to it because they're too elaborate. These recipes, on the other hand, are so simple you won't even need the recipe after you've made them once or twice. And on those days when you're too discombobulated to do much about dinner but you can't bear another batch of take-out, let one of these pleasing but easy to make numbers ring your dinner bell.