Hello friends! The cold snap is over so spring is back! The temperature has gone up to 4 degrees Celsius/40 Fahrenheit which is very mild for Ottawa at this time of year. The dumping of snow we got recently has melted so the city looks like one big puddle right now. I returned to work last Monday after a two week staycation and it is so hard getting back into the routine. I called our pension centre on Tuesday and I am looking at buying back some years of service and also transferring some years of service from a former employer to my present employer so I can whittle down the time I need to work until retirement. Right now I’d have to work for another 10 years to be eligible for a full pension and I will be 71 by then. I have no interest working that long so hopefully I can reduce the amount of time I need to work. In the meantime I continue to keep myself busy. My menus for this week look like this:
Today: I ran over to the store earlier to pick up some missing ingredients for dishes this week so I won’t need to pick anything up over the weekend. I picked up lunch while I was there and got fried chicken and mac 'n cheese for lunch which was pretty good for grocery store take-out food. I will have a tofu salad from my Moosewood cookbook. The salad consists of cabbage and carrots as a base then you can add whatever veggies in the fridge to bulk it up. Chopped tofu is added to the top.
Saturday: I plan on seeing the movie “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” tomorrow afternoon. I will have a stuffed squash for dinner. I had some ground beef in the freezer last week so I used it to make a ground beef and rice mixture that I usually use for stuffed peppers but I will be using it to stuff squash. I had enough for four servings and I had four squash halves so I will be finishing it up over the next few weeks.
Sunday: I will go for another art gallery visit. I have a lot of exhibitions to catch up on! I will have a salmon teriyaki for dinner with bok choy and a daikon radish and carrot salad on the side.
Monday: Someone on the Ottawa subreddit is planning on a series of Asian themed dinners out. So tonight we will be going for hotpot.
Wednesday: I’ve signed up for another drawing class and tonight is the first class. I will make an easy to fix dinner when I get home so I have aginger bok choy soup with noodles.
Thursday: I’m going to a screening with the Ottawa Film Society tonight so I will tie in a dinner after the movie.
Hello and happy cooking in the new year! Cooking for 2 back in Chattanooga, where I’m so delighted to be back in the kitchen, after weeks in a household where recipes developed after 1965 are deemed to be weird and inedible…Fortunately I was able to eat my fill of cheese and butter (I could hear my doctor screaming at me from across the pond) and I made some pretty good desserts.
Breakfast today: Peach crumb muffins (last summer’s frozen peaches) from Smitten Kitchen Keepers
Saturday, January 10 (also today): Shrimp salad sandwiches and broccoli or kale on the side
Sunday: Bean and bacon soup, bean salad from Classic German Cooking, plum skillet cake
Tuesday: Sweet potato Mac & cheese from Family, veg TBD
Friday: Salmon piccata from Cook’s Country (RIP), rice, veg TBD
All other days are TBD. DH starts his semester this week and has late afternoon classes, so it’ll take us a little while to optimize eating schedules.
Have a good week, whether the weather is frightful or delightful! Happy cooking!
It was a busy week of reunions and catching up with close friends I lost touch with in the days of letter-writing, and also some extended family visiting from various places (including an aunt an uncle who live 20 mins from me).
Food-wise it’s been simpler overall and milder for mom this week, and we are still working through leftovers too.
Ideas for the week:
— Homemade pizza (tomato sauce and pesto potato versions)
— Yebeg Alecha or Chicken Alecha with potatoes https://ethiopian-food.org/yebeg-alicha-wot-recipe/
— Green Enchiladas (chicken, veggies & cheese) + Mexican rice
— Pork chops in Chinese bbq sauce or with Naga chilli
— Beef Rendang
— Something Korean or Sichuan still pending
— Assorted offal favorites
Wish you all a calm and peaceful week ahead with good eats.
Hi, friends. Cooking for three staggered diners in the Boston burbs - this wrestling practice schedule is wreaking havoc with family dinners during the week. But I got to see DS in a home match last week… it was terrifying (for me). He’s not very good yet, but he’s got a good attitude about it.
Sun: burgers, air fryer asparagus. I also made a batch of SK’s chicken, leek, and rice soup for lunches (and the freezer) and NYT Brussels sprouts/apple slaw for when I get tired of the soup.
Mon: turkey cutlets (Cajun seasoning), one-pot mac and cheese, green beans
Tues: chicken taquitos (sort of this), refried black beans
Weds: sloppy joes, but maybe not - not sure I feel like it - so… something else using buns?
Soup Week – second of two. It comes with the bonus of a considerable amount of freezer clean-out.
FRI: Chicken, vegetable, and orzo soup. Saltines.
SAT: Chili with black beans. Tortilla chips.
SUN: Lions head bok-choy soup. Steamed rice. I’ve linked here to a similar recipe from Saveur, but I like to give this soup a good one-to-one-and-a-half-hour braise.
I think I’ll try making Lion’s Head soup. I remember reading a few recipes in the Chinese cookbooks we had when I was growing up. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it.
I originally got the recipe from Martha Stewart, but can’t seem to find it again (neither in my books nor on-line). The Saveur version is really close. I add water chestnuts to the meat mix, love it braised, and will serve over a scoop of white rice - so comforting!
Any plans I might’ve had for this next week have become irrelevant, given my absolute & utter uselessness completing even the simplest household tasks, including cooking . The chicken stock I made from the Sam’s Club carcass is still sitting in the garage in the stock pot, unskimmed & unfiltered, so hopefully my PIC can take care of that tonight, and put the broth in containers to be frozen.
Still not sure if my body is ready for a cheeseburger meal tonight, and we may well stick to something low-key like takeout sushi or (the much cheaper option) frozen domplings instead. This means the TJ’s burger patties we picked up on Monday should probably also head to the freezer today.
Tomorrow we are invited to a lamb dinner — very likely the first meal at someone’s house I will be attending in pajama pants, ever
I had to cancel my show on Saturday evening for similar logistical reasons
Looks like we will be playing the coming days’ menus by ear, and my PIC will continue to do the heavy lifting… since I can’t do any lifting for the next 4 to 6 weeks.
Stay warm, stay safe, stay sane…. and take extra good care of your shoulders
Yes, far more restricting for much longer than I’d expected to be out of commission, TBH. This will be putting my already limited patience to the test.
Be kind to yourself. I had different arm surgery 3 years ago and was similarly taken aback at how useless I was for longer than expected. But it will get better!! And the workarounds I developed continue to be useful! (I automated a process at work because of only being able to type with one hand and it has served my whole team well ever since.)
Thank you! If you have any hot tips on how to wash one’s hair with only one available arm, I would be eternally grateful (DM’s fine). The current plan is to try the kitchen sink tomorrow
I don’t know how I’d be able to manage w/out my PIC’s help & support!
Hello friends! It’s been pretty quiet here this week. I had intended on going to a hotpot restaurant with some fellow redditors last Monday but decided to back out since I realized that my sketching class started on Wednesday then I had a film society screening last night. Three nights out a week is too much for me so I backed out of dinner on Monday (can’t remember now what I had instead) then went off to class on Wednesday night. It had been mild up to then but when I left class the temperature was starting to dip and the sidewalks were getting slippery. It started snowing overnight so when I woke up yesterday morning there was enough snow on the sidewalks to cover the black ice so you don’t see it until you wipe out on it. I worked from home instead (I usually work in the office on Thursdays) so I switched days and I am spending a rare Friday in the office. There are only two of us here today so it really feels like the weekend already I skipped my film society screening last night so I curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and talked to a friend on the phone then watched “The Valley Persian Style” and I have decided that I am now done with the Real Housewives series. This is what I have on tap this week:
Today: I bought lunch in the food court today. There is a tuck shop downstairs that sells all sorts of nutritious snacks and a nice selection of coffees and teas and at lunch time they usually have a choice of two different soups (today they had three!) and an assortment of sandwiches all of which are very good. But the big draw for me is the Thai chicken curry which seems to be available every day and it’s hands down my favourite. So I got a curry and rice and salad for lunch and a piece of their delicious carrot cake for dessert I will have a Greek salad for dinner.
Saturday: Activities for today are up in the air, either a gallery visit or movie. I will have some bbq’d pork I found in the freezer recently - I bought it on my last trip to Chinatown which was before Christmas - and I would like to finish it up in anticipation of an upcoming trip at the end of the month. I will have some chow mein with it.
Sunday: Either a movie or gallery visit, whichever I didn’t do yesterday. Dinner will be a shrimp salad.
Wednesday: Drawing class. Over the weekend I will make achana saag to put up in the freezer so I can heat up leftovers when I get home from class. I will most likely have rice with it.
Thursday: Another screening with the Ottawa Film Society so I am keeping my fingers crossed we don’t get another snowmageddon… I will have dinner after the movies.
It’s been a crazy winter this year…
Always nice to be back in one’s own kitchen!
. The chicken stock I made from the Sam’s Club carcass is still sitting in the garage in the stock pot, unskimmed & unfiltered, so hopefully my PIC can take care of that tonight, and put the broth in containers to be frozen.
I will have a Greek salad for dinner.
