Happy birthday @ottawaoperadiva!
I love your shopping and exploring plan.
Also very supportive of creative incorporation of both desserts — there’s breakfast, lunch, teatime, and dinner, plus I can think of a few more if you need — elevenses, bedtime snack, and so on. Double dessert!
Thanks for the birthday wishes! You’re giving me great ideas for having two desserts in a day! But I think I’ll pick up both desserts when I’m out and about tomorrow afternoon and have one tomorrow night and the other on Monday night while I watch The Voice.
Ohhhh…having a delicious dessert in the wings waiting for you is a great way to do it!
Happy Birthday! I hope it’s a great birthday weekend!
Thank you! I now have three museum visits pencilled in and a couple of trips to the mall so it looks like I will be busy.
Hi everyone, I’m home from Spain, which was wonderful, and brought a cold with me. Starting to feel human again today, which is great, because we have reservations to go out for dinner. It is LLD’s birthday week, and I did my best, but last night I had to give in and get carry out. Short week since I got home after dinner time on Tuesday.
Wed: pasta with cauliflower, anchovy, garlic
Thurs: flank steak with sautéed portobellos over arugula (Polpo), baguette; raspberry sour cream tart
Fri: carry out
Sat: dinner out
Sun: I will make curried coconut chicken soup over rice, salad with Asian dressing. More tart.
Spring is coming. Daffodils are popping up and it is 64 degrees out. I hope everyone has a good week with delicious food.
Happy birthday to LLD and I hope you get over the rest of your cold quickly! Carry out is essential some days, as I keep reminding the older adult male in my household when I can’t cook and he won’t! I’m jealous of your daffodils…we are a ways away from that in Boston!
Happy birthday LLD! Your week sounds delicious and we are also a long way from Boston weatherwise. Glad to hear you had a nice vacation in Spain.
Pasta and steak both sound delicious, and I have been on a curry soup kick myself 
Happy happy to LLD!
So I made the lentils this morning. Then I got really hungry because I had a late lunch planned with a friend, so I just ate them without anything else 
. Have more soaking now for the original purpose.
Hi, everyone. No cooking mojo this week, so the theme is “cook once, eat many many times.” Today’s big excitement was vaccines - HepB booster #1 for me, pneumonia for DH. Do we know how to live it up or what??
Sun: carnitas, rolled from last week. (I’d pulled a 4lb bag of pork shoulder chunks from the freezer, defrosting it in the fridge, but when I went to cook it, the bag had leaked and it smelled off. So this is a do-over with a fresh batch of meat, and also a way to use up a couple of the Sumo mandarins that were getting squishy.) Black beans and rice on the side. I’m also making a batch of sweet potato and red lentil curry (NYT) for my lunches.
Mon: lasagna, roasted asparagus
Tues: chicken and green bean stir-fry (thanks to @ottawaoperadiva for the idea)
Weds: carnitas again
Thurs: lasagna again
Happy Monday. It has been a week! 
Here’s what I have on tap for the next couple of weeks. I bought just about everything needed (gee$$$h!) and now it’s a race to use ingredients strategically before they go bad.
May I just say I’m tired? There’s so much going on in the world my head is spinning. I do feel this thread to be a soft landing and welcoming place.
Some good eating there! Can I come over the night you have the pistachio-mint chicken kofta??? That meal sounds especially wonderful.
Hi folks
My prediction for people getting sick with the crazy weather changes has come true for me, ugh – with the help of sick friends or sick friends’ kids who didn’t think they needed to warn me, sigh. Fighting it with everything I’ve got (turmeric, honey, ayurvedic remedies, a tisane specifically to fight colds, immunity supplements, you name it). Fingers crossed it passes quickly.
Ideas for the week:
– Pan-roasted chicken + Ottolenghi sweet potato mash + broccoli.
– Gambas al ajillo / shrimp scampi either with toast or over capellini + broccoli.
– Roasted salmon or NYT Salmon Burgers with warm brown lentil salad and possibly roasted fennel (idea borrowed from @mbcraw4d ).
– Kabab/Kofta or Lahmacun or Arayes because I have pita and ground beef to use up + Curried Carrot and Lentil soup (kind of a mash-up between this Ottolenghi soup and this Chrissy Teigen soup).
– Thai-ish chicken bowls using TJs satay sauce + tbd veg + quinoa-rice blend.
– Nobu-style miso black cod (freezer, marinated ages ago but I never rememeber to eat it) + snow pea salad + quinoa-rice blend.
– Curry chicken noodle soup again using a new tweak from a Malaysian recipe (using both curry paste and curry powder, duh) with homemade bone broth and some of the Massaman chicken curry I made.
– Pongal + Nigella’s quick Fish Bhorta using some fish sticks I think are languishing in the freezer (if not I may roast some butternut squash and use that).
Wish you all a good week.
Cooking for one in the Maine woods.
Saturday - meatloaf from a 1998 Martha Living recipe, sour cream mashed, braised green beans.
Sunday - TJ’s dolmas with tahini sauce. Leftovers much better today for lunch with big squeeze of lemon.
Tonight - thrilled to have leftovers from Saturday that just needs reheating. Monday afternoons now mean an endless forecast call by the end of which I am completely fried.
Next 4 nights: gorgeous merguez from the farm which just announced they are closing the farm market for MONTHS for renovations 
plus a 3-pack of sausage slammers.
Sides: have wherewithal for SK cannellini Aglio e Olio with Artichokes (think recommended by @LulusMom); harissa roasted carrots; an old Jamie Oliver recipe for roasted fennel with garlic, tomatoes, kalamatas, and thyme; spinach; mini cucumbers for a variety of salads. So will change up the sides to keep the slammers interesting.
ETA: I see that I can combine leftovers from most of the sides and bits of the sausages to make a pretty interesting kitchen sink soup.
Have a good week everyone!
Thanks! The recipe was written for beef but I’m going to try it with chicken 
Love the fish and tacos meals. Would love to eat those!
I love that fishstick bhorta recipe so much. Hope you manage to keep the cold short.
Yes! Hope you like the bean and artichoke meal. It’s so easy, and I usually have everything for it in my pantry.
I realize I forgot to get parsley. Since everything else in it is pantry, that will push it to later in the week after I acquire some.
