Food on the Mind
Nov. 20th, 2005 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamusedinatxOdd, how I pick the moments I'm sitting here indulging my mood with junk food (I am totally addicted to Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper!) and making my grocery list for tomorrow's shopping, since I didn't do jack-shit today.
It's a short work week this week. M-W only. A four-day weekend looms. I have plans alone and plans with friends. I am contributing to a dinner, rather than making it so I want to be sure I do not spend a fortune on food and groceries I'm not going to eat. At the same time I need to get a better grip on my diet...better than I have been anyway, and when I did my best at that I did so by making a menu for the week and adhere to it. (She tries not to glance at the hot dog and macaroni salad as she writes this). Another consideration...for cooking at home...is my oven is a bit, shall we say, undependable. It heats, it cooks with gas, it has some tremendous hot spots and requires constant vigilance. So, I tend more towards stove top cooking.
My two contributions to Turkey day is a spicy pumpkin soup and a homemade cranberry-orange chutney.
Other items on my menu for the week include:
Turkey burgers with swiss cheese and marinated mushrooms
A big batch of chili (even though it's rather warm out)
Creamed spinach with pine nuts
Roasted garlic mashed cauliflower (mock potato dish)
tequila-lime chicken quesadillas
creamy mushroom soup
Babaganoush (sic) with fresh pomegranate seeds and whole wheat pita
That'll be enough cooking, I think, for this week. For those already on my recipe filter, I'll be posting the recipes soon. If you're new and not yet on there, let me know and I'll add you!
The mainstay of holiday cooking in the US is the good ol' turkey. When I was growing up we only ate turkey on Thanksgiving and on Christmas. We had ham on Easter and prime rib or a crown roast for New Year's.
Not so these days. In giving up carbs and eating more animal protein I do try to keep my fat content down and so I eat a lot of turkey, either carved turkey meat from the deli or ground turkey meat made into burgers, chili, and meatloaf. So over the last five years or so, the 'tradition' of stuffing a bird that is predominately bone and slaving over a hot oven for 8-12 hours has lost its 'tradition' to me I toyed with the idea of an anti-thanksgiving day meal and making something totally weird like oh...I dunno... apple and garlic pizza with fresh basil and toasted pinenuts, or...a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The problem with that idea is that I *LIKE* to cook! So, why not do so?
The dishes I list above cook relatively easily. They also portion for easy storage in the fridge, in the freezer. They provide the traditional tastes of turkey, cranberry, pumpkin in a different way A few of them, like the creamy mushroom soup are alternates to gravy.
So, tomorrow and Tuesday, I have a pilgrimage on the way home to Safeway and to the Berkeley Bowl (all fresh veggies, all the time). And on Wednesday night and through the weekend, I shall have not one huge cooking feast, but many smaller cooking celebrations
For now, however, I'm going to finish my diet cherry-vanilla dr. pepper (burp) and my organic corn chips with sour cream and relax.
It's a short work week this week. M-W only. A four-day weekend looms. I have plans alone and plans with friends. I am contributing to a dinner, rather than making it so I want to be sure I do not spend a fortune on food and groceries I'm not going to eat. At the same time I need to get a better grip on my diet...better than I have been anyway, and when I did my best at that I did so by making a menu for the week and adhere to it. (She tries not to glance at the hot dog and macaroni salad as she writes this). Another consideration...for cooking at home...is my oven is a bit, shall we say, undependable. It heats, it cooks with gas, it has some tremendous hot spots and requires constant vigilance. So, I tend more towards stove top cooking.
My two contributions to Turkey day is a spicy pumpkin soup and a homemade cranberry-orange chutney.
Other items on my menu for the week include:
Turkey burgers with swiss cheese and marinated mushrooms
A big batch of chili (even though it's rather warm out)
Creamed spinach with pine nuts
Roasted garlic mashed cauliflower (mock potato dish)
tequila-lime chicken quesadillas
creamy mushroom soup
Babaganoush (sic) with fresh pomegranate seeds and whole wheat pita
That'll be enough cooking, I think, for this week. For those already on my recipe filter, I'll be posting the recipes soon. If you're new and not yet on there, let me know and I'll add you!
The mainstay of holiday cooking in the US is the good ol' turkey. When I was growing up we only ate turkey on Thanksgiving and on Christmas. We had ham on Easter and prime rib or a crown roast for New Year's.
Not so these days. In giving up carbs and eating more animal protein I do try to keep my fat content down and so I eat a lot of turkey, either carved turkey meat from the deli or ground turkey meat made into burgers, chili, and meatloaf. So over the last five years or so, the 'tradition' of stuffing a bird that is predominately bone and slaving over a hot oven for 8-12 hours has lost its 'tradition' to me I toyed with the idea of an anti-thanksgiving day meal and making something totally weird like oh...I dunno... apple and garlic pizza with fresh basil and toasted pinenuts, or...a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The problem with that idea is that I *LIKE* to cook! So, why not do so?
The dishes I list above cook relatively easily. They also portion for easy storage in the fridge, in the freezer. They provide the traditional tastes of turkey, cranberry, pumpkin in a different way A few of them, like the creamy mushroom soup are alternates to gravy.
So, tomorrow and Tuesday, I have a pilgrimage on the way home to Safeway and to the Berkeley Bowl (all fresh veggies, all the time). And on Wednesday night and through the weekend, I shall have not one huge cooking feast, but many smaller cooking celebrations
For now, however, I'm going to finish my diet cherry-vanilla dr. pepper (burp) and my organic corn chips with sour cream and relax.
