Tag: dinner together

New York Times Cooking

Cooking and reading seem to be always on my  mind. This week I didn’t cook at all until inspiration hit me on Thursday. Sometimes after school I seriously have to take a 20 minute nap to keep going and while I was building up to get up I scrolled through my NYT cooking app to find a recipe for dinner. Lucky me, I found two.  And I had all the ingredients  – with a little improvisation thrown in.

Roasted Salmon and Brussels Sprouts was a very easy recipe to throw together and the results were very good.  I didn’t have any salmon but I did have 4 pieces of frozen tilapia waiting for the right moment.  In our vegetable drawer I had a leftover stalk or two of broccoli so I cut that into small pieces and added it to the brussels sprout mixture. While this was roasting I cooked a small portion of brown rice and we mixed it altogether.  Quick, easy with a healthy protein.  We don’t generally have any red meat here, a little organic chicken and fish now and then and we seem to be staying healthy through this long-ass winter.

Curried Cauliflower Soup from Martha Rose was pretty simple to assembly while I waited for the first meal to cook. This one I had all the right ingredients and I have it for backup meals this week.  This soup is spicy and will taste great with some toasted naan bread.  This next week will be very busy with our Spring (?) Scholastic book fair and conferences. Having a few meals prepared will help us get through the week and make it to Spring Break.

In the midst of more snowfall we are headed to Chicago for the first few days of Spring Break 2019! Road trips mean lots of uninterrupted time to read.  I’m excited to shop on Devon Street – I need to replenish some spice jars and I love looking at the stores in this area.

This week more inspiration hit and I joined Book-of-the-Month Club because as my daughter said “Just what you need! More books”  But seriously ~ I liked the idea of trying some new titles/authors and after showing the list to my husband we both agreed on Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

I’m halfway through Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward and have to hurry to finish because my adult wine-drinking book club meets the Monday after our Chicago trip and our March read is Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. I’ve heard a lot of great things about this story so I’m anxious to get started.

Cheers to a good week!

Peaceful Reading…

Freezing temps mean lots of delicious soups

The weather is still chilly here and this morning there were big fat flakes floating down. It looked lovely but I was too bleary-eyed to snap a photo. We made it through the week without one snow day though which will help us in June. We’ll see what this week brings with more snow predicted.

[From Minimalist Baker}
I made two hearty dishes to keep us all warm and full this week. On Monday I whipped up Minimalist Baker’s Rich Red Curry with roasted vegetables.  We played with the ingredients and added tofu and regular brown lentils and left out the cabbage. This I will make again – the red curry sauce was delicious and would pair well with many vegetables. I used a mix of broccoli and cauliflower and swapped yellow potatoes for the sweet.  We love sweet potatoes here but Groovy Girl does not like them mixed in with other ingredients. This recipe made enough that we had leftovers for the next few nights and even added it with brown rice into a tortilla for an on-the-go dinner.  
[Gimme some oven]
Yesterday I was craving fish and found some raised-in-the USA cod, fresh in the glass case. It’s very difficult to find quality fish-I don’t want my fish to come from China-sorry China but you’re not known for good fishing practices and I like my food to be a little more local. I already have issues about eating fish and pollution  in the ocean and depleting numbers of fish in the ocean and for the most part have stopped buying fish and ordering fish when I’m out just for this reason yet yesterday I guess I was in the mood. I bought $20 worth of nice fat pieces of cod.  It was delicious, tender and flaky with a little cracker crust and a lemon squeezed over the top.  I loosely followed this recipe. 
We had baked sweet potatoes with our flaky cod fillets plus I made this lemon lentil soup for an appetizer but we ended up eating all at the same time. I got held up making the soup as I scoured my kitchen for my immersion blender which is missing.  I love my Hamilton Beach immersion blender and I’m confused as to where it’s gone. Anyway we used the big Ninja blender instead (more parts to clean) and this soup, Lemony Lentil Soup, was fantastic.  
To match with my two new recipes I also I have two books to share.  Cold weather always makes it easier to lay on the sofa and read, except lets be honest, any season has me sitting/laying somewhere and reading. I wouldn’t be adverse to springing ahead to some hammock-time soon. 
Less by Andrew Sean Greer ( 2017): The comical tale of Arthur Less, an accomplished author, who feels less than all the time. His current lover has left to get married in Sonoma and he takes this opportunity to plan via a few author invites for teaching abroad and odd award ceremonies to get away from his current Bay Area life. What follows is a wonderful travel journey in much the same vein as Kerouac’s On the road but with planes instead of cars and gay lovers and wine instead of copious amounts of drugs. This is my first Andrew Sean Greer novel and I’m happy to be introduced. I can’t wait to discuss this with my book group.
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (2017): Recently I was able to break away from dance mom week to see If Beale Street Could Talk which is a beautifully done film almost in an old noir style, slow and steady with great acting and a good background jazz beat. This book has a similar story line probably all too common in the racist world we live in. We have to realize this happens far more than we can ever imagine. Celestial and Roy, married for one year, find themselves separated by a prison door after one woman’s rapid complaint against Roy who is innocent.  Jones’ writing is very easy to read and I’ll have to go back and read Silver Sparrow. 
Stay warm where ever you might be. I have friends headed to Mexico today and friends who just came back from a cruise.  All I can do is bask in the winter sunshine flowing through the library windows.  
Peaceful Reading…