Cooking By Remote Control
I'm still utterly flat, crashing two or even three times a day and spending most of the day too tired to get out of bed, so haven't been able to do very much cooking, though I'm still locating recipes or coming up with food combinations, sometimes on the fly while at the farmers market. I am reacting to the current farmers market situation with insane glee and buying way too many vegetables, because there are new things that I want to eat for the first time this year (green beans! summer squash!) And old things that I am not yet tired of (spring onions! asparagus!)
--- boo these crashes are getting really old
+++ walking in the mornings means I am at least getting some exercise every day
+++ am still able to get up and pack lunches/dinners
+++ packing dinner for myself means I EAT DINNER NOW which is really a nice change from being too tired to possibly fix myself anything to eat. I may gain some weight back. Hopefully not too much.
What we've done this week:
Big batch cooking day which consisted of a green garlic blossom frittata. The green garlic stems, which I roasted, were still a bit fibrous, but flavorful. I think if I use them again I'll cut them into smaller pieces so they chew better, but otherwise I was very happy with this one. I pushed little cubes of cheese into the top layer of egg after it got to the "wait to set" stage, and topped it with halved garlic blossoms, and then sprinkled a little parmesan on top before it went into the oven. The blossoms with parmesan browned very nicely.
There was also a BIG chopped salad which I went overboard on. Also I got too many small veggies like radishes and tender delicious yellow and purple carrots that I wanted to put in. In the future I will restrict myself to veggies that can be run through a mandolin in short order, like daikon instead of French radishes, big carrots instead of little baby ones, cucumbers, etc. This will cut down the time significantly. Also I ended up with four days worth of marinated salad, and even three days is just pushing it. I added a little kvass to make it keep better through pickling. I will see if it is scary tomorrow and if it is not, we will eat it, and if it is, I have a backup plan. On the other hand, it's been taking me a long time to do all of the fiddly work of making green salads right before packing lunch, and green salads just do not keep as well as this format, so I want to make more of these types of salads. I might mix in green salads but just for lunch, and then label Brad's lunch so he gets the keepy salad/veggies for dinner. It is also very nice to just be able to portion out the salad when packing, and not have to chop ten thousand vegetables and make a vinaigrette. I can speed up green salads by making dressings in advance and chopping any hard veggies like radishes, leaving delicate veggies like cukes and lettuce and mixing in the dressing right at the end.
Remote control cooking: Yesterday, Brad made a cauliflower soup based on my mumbled instructions from bed. This had two heads of cauliflower, a can of cannelini beans, a big onion, garlic, a little cumin, and about a quarter cup of green chili powder from New Mexico. I stirred in some cilantro at the end. This all got pureed. It made a huge pot of soup, so I froze a fair amount. It has a nice kick.
Today for our bentos I did some freezer cleaning. We freeze a portion of our cooking so we always have easy prepared meals, but they only keep a few months, so we have to cycle through them, and some were coming due. Since we try to freeze only things that freeze well and that we liked when we made them, this is usually a nice break from cooking.
Tonight Brad made the Thomas Keller roast chicken recipe that everyone's been raving about how it makes a wonderful crispy skin, and it's just out of the oven and does indeed have a wonderful crispy skin and a bed of yummy veggies. I had gotten enough veggies that we also ended up with an entire SECOND pan of roasted veggies, nom nom nom. The veggie mix is a little different from the recipe because we used more spring-like veggies, including some darling baby cauliflowers that I found today (just quartered and added to the pan), whole mushrooms, spring onions, and patty pan squash. We're low on frozen prepared veggies for meals, so having lots of these is no hardship. This is all cooling and I'll portion the chicken out tomorrow for the next few days. It seems funny to not eat it right away, but I was crashy, we'd already prepared dinner, etc., and it will still make great leftovers (and a big pot of chicken soup.)
For fruit we've been having a mix of blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. The cherries are all for me as Brad doesn't like them. I also froze two quarts of strawberries, which will be very welcome this winter. I don't have a really great feel for how much fruit to freeze to get through the winter, but this is probably about it until we get a chest freezer. I might be able to squeeze in a quart of blueberries if I figure out something to do with that almond meal that's been sitting in there.
--- boo these crashes are getting really old
+++ walking in the mornings means I am at least getting some exercise every day
+++ am still able to get up and pack lunches/dinners
+++ packing dinner for myself means I EAT DINNER NOW which is really a nice change from being too tired to possibly fix myself anything to eat. I may gain some weight back. Hopefully not too much.
What we've done this week:
Big batch cooking day which consisted of a green garlic blossom frittata. The green garlic stems, which I roasted, were still a bit fibrous, but flavorful. I think if I use them again I'll cut them into smaller pieces so they chew better, but otherwise I was very happy with this one. I pushed little cubes of cheese into the top layer of egg after it got to the "wait to set" stage, and topped it with halved garlic blossoms, and then sprinkled a little parmesan on top before it went into the oven. The blossoms with parmesan browned very nicely.
There was also a BIG chopped salad which I went overboard on. Also I got too many small veggies like radishes and tender delicious yellow and purple carrots that I wanted to put in. In the future I will restrict myself to veggies that can be run through a mandolin in short order, like daikon instead of French radishes, big carrots instead of little baby ones, cucumbers, etc. This will cut down the time significantly. Also I ended up with four days worth of marinated salad, and even three days is just pushing it. I added a little kvass to make it keep better through pickling. I will see if it is scary tomorrow and if it is not, we will eat it, and if it is, I have a backup plan. On the other hand, it's been taking me a long time to do all of the fiddly work of making green salads right before packing lunch, and green salads just do not keep as well as this format, so I want to make more of these types of salads. I might mix in green salads but just for lunch, and then label Brad's lunch so he gets the keepy salad/veggies for dinner. It is also very nice to just be able to portion out the salad when packing, and not have to chop ten thousand vegetables and make a vinaigrette. I can speed up green salads by making dressings in advance and chopping any hard veggies like radishes, leaving delicate veggies like cukes and lettuce and mixing in the dressing right at the end.
Remote control cooking: Yesterday, Brad made a cauliflower soup based on my mumbled instructions from bed. This had two heads of cauliflower, a can of cannelini beans, a big onion, garlic, a little cumin, and about a quarter cup of green chili powder from New Mexico. I stirred in some cilantro at the end. This all got pureed. It made a huge pot of soup, so I froze a fair amount. It has a nice kick.
Today for our bentos I did some freezer cleaning. We freeze a portion of our cooking so we always have easy prepared meals, but they only keep a few months, so we have to cycle through them, and some were coming due. Since we try to freeze only things that freeze well and that we liked when we made them, this is usually a nice break from cooking.
Tonight Brad made the Thomas Keller roast chicken recipe that everyone's been raving about how it makes a wonderful crispy skin, and it's just out of the oven and does indeed have a wonderful crispy skin and a bed of yummy veggies. I had gotten enough veggies that we also ended up with an entire SECOND pan of roasted veggies, nom nom nom. The veggie mix is a little different from the recipe because we used more spring-like veggies, including some darling baby cauliflowers that I found today (just quartered and added to the pan), whole mushrooms, spring onions, and patty pan squash. We're low on frozen prepared veggies for meals, so having lots of these is no hardship. This is all cooling and I'll portion the chicken out tomorrow for the next few days. It seems funny to not eat it right away, but I was crashy, we'd already prepared dinner, etc., and it will still make great leftovers (and a big pot of chicken soup.)
For fruit we've been having a mix of blueberries, strawberries, and cherries. The cherries are all for me as Brad doesn't like them. I also froze two quarts of strawberries, which will be very welcome this winter. I don't have a really great feel for how much fruit to freeze to get through the winter, but this is probably about it until we get a chest freezer. I might be able to squeeze in a quart of blueberries if I figure out something to do with that almond meal that's been sitting in there.