Weekend of Cooking

Many of my FB Friends write about the meals that they've made or just eaten.  Often they are gourmet-esque, but it always bothers me a bit because it's not like they completed an epic quest.  They made dinner.  Millions of people make three meals a day! 

But here's where I eat crow, because I'm writing about the food that I made this weekend.  Mostly because it was a pretty epic amount of items in just two days!

First, I made stuffed salmon.  Okay, this one was easy because I bought the salmon already-stuffed from CostCo.  I like to have enough main dishes, veggie side dishes, and fruit to last all of the lunches for the week.  Main dish=done!

I also started cooking for yoga.  See, I read an article in Yoga Journal about how someone made bundt cake every day for a year, and gave it away to different people every week.  She talked about the act of giving made the act of baking a more spiritual practice.  It wouldn't be spiritual if I did it every week, but a hassle, so I decided to cook something for someone once a month.  The first problem that I ran in to is that I don't want to give my friends sugary or fattening gifts!  Everyone is trying to be healthier, and I don't want my spiritual practice to derail someone.  So for my first attempt, in January, I made the person that I was seeing a fruit and nut bar.  It didn't come out quite right because I have no patience for dicing, but he says that he liked. For February, a friend from work was sick, so I decided to make her something.  I chose a healthy apply crisp, with oatmeal and wheat flour and apples (of course).  It turned out pretty well!  Spiritual practice=done!

On to my vegetable box.  I learned of Farm Fresh to You through a Groupon, and have been a member for two months now.  I. Love. It.  I love getting food delivered to my door.  I love organic fruit and vegetables.  I love someone else choosing a variety of new (to me) and familiar fruits and veggies, picked at their peak.  This month, I received kale in my wonderful little box.  Huh. Kale.  What the heck to do you do with kale?  So I looked up kale recipes online, and found that I shouldn't have cooked the chard so quickly; there are lots of soup recipes that include chard, kale, and beans.  Sounds yummy!  Oh, yeah, so I also cooked chard this weekend in soy sauce.  Since the chard was out, I chose a recipe for kale chips.  You just bake the kale leaves with season salt and some oil, and they turn out like seasoned seaweed.  So yummy!

Finally, I also try to make one recipe a week from a cookbook.  The cookbook that I'm currently going through is a birthday present that has recipes for pesto and tapenade.  This week's "pesto" was an artichoke spread.  I'm not sure that it should be called a "pesto" since it had neither pine nuts nor basil in it, but it was in the cookbook!  I bought a giant jar of artichokes from CostCo, but couldn't get it opened!  Rather than cry over my artichokes, I went to a neighbor and had him open in.  He's a nice older gentleman.  Always says hi to me.  Calls me darling.  Anyway, he opened it, so I gave him about half of the spread as a "Thank you."  Which is too bad, because I just had it last night, and it is certainly very delicious!

That's my weekend of cooking.  With the ingredients I have on hand, I could make a mean Square-1, too.  I might do that next weekend.  Square-1 is the name of a vegetable casserole that I made up, and my girlfriend (at the time) named.  Because it was in a square pan.  And it was the first dish that she named. 

Lots of cooking=lots of eating.  Yes!