Cooking practice

What do you do if it's 50 degrees and drizzling outside?

Make a shantytown out of a giant box, of course.  Pajamas optional.


If you can get lunch served to you in your box, all the better.


I'm wrapping up my cooking class now.  Below, barley-chickpea salad with balsamic-tahini dressing.

When I'm not cooking these days, I'm probably at a Little League game.

I'm still working on fitting in the last of the cooking lessons.

Farfalle and chicken with creamy basil sauce

This was the lesson on "making food sexy," ie, plating; aka, appealing visual presentation.  Very appropriate for date night.

 Major extra credit for the fireplace and candles.

Soup night.  Below, Tom Turkey Soup... one of my practice dishes that got a tepid response.

Jason enjoyed this one:  Iron Chef challenge.  He was to go in the kitchen and pick 3 ingredients "at random" and I had to use them (and others if I wanted) to make dinner.

When I saw his chosen ingredients I knew there was nothing random about it.  I managed to deliver what he really wanted, which was obviously peanut chicken.


And it was seriously good.

Soup night #2 was a better success.  Here, Poulet de Provence Soup, served with fresh bread and salad.

Last week I ran in the same 5k that I ran last year.  As I hoped, it was much less grueling, both during and after, despite clocking in a good 5 minutes faster than last year.


My legs are really sore though.


My dear family came to cheer me on.  The race started a few minutes early, so I first spotted them on lap 2, when I heard cheers of, "Mommy!  Mommy!  Go Mommy!"  Lap 3, more cheers.  Sometime during lap 4, Caleb apparently sustained a mortal scratch on his knee that was invisible to everyone but him, so laps 4 through 8 the cheers were replaced by screaming.


Every.  Lap.


At least I knew they were still there.


They were there at the finish line too, recording video, cheering, and screaming about the wounded knee, respectively.

You would think running several miles on a hot day while your child screams on the sideline is one of the more difficult ways to support charity.  But actually, I was much more successful at that than the far simpler task of donating to the local food pantry.

It really couldn't have been easier.  A bag appeared on my doorknob with a note from the local Ruritan Club.  All I had to do was put a few things in from my pantry and leave it on the doorstep, and the Ruritan Club would pick it up for donation.

Unfortunately, I got the date wrong when I dutifully set my bag on the doorstep.  And more unfortunately, it rained all night long.  

And most unfortunately, cardboard boxes of dry pasta don't do well sitting in the rain all night.

When I brought in my waterlogged bag and lifted out the wet spaghetti box, it dissolved in my hand and bloated noodles spilled all over my foyer.

Awesome.  

I saved the cans that did survive the rain and made a note of the real date... and then forgot to set out the bag.

Charity donation fail.

I'll have to stick to running hot miles in the sun instead.

I've gotten lots of opportunities to play with my camera, now that spring is here and there are lots of baseball games.

Jeddy had a night game.

See?  Night.

And I even got some cool pics under those challenging lighting conditions.


I love my camera.

I haven't bothered to get out my camera for recording my practice meals, so, sadly, all my food photography is with my phone.

Last night was date night again:  we had parmesan and herb chicken breast filets; white, brown, wild and red rice; oven-roasted Brussels sprouts; and crispy kale chips.

The lesson part was actually the appetizer, which was to try something I've always wanted to but thought was too hard.


I roasted whole garlic, which was actually really easy.  The cloves turn to mush and you can spread it on your fresh bread....yum.

I'm really glad I'm doing this course.  I think it's getting me over the hump between someone who knows how to follow recipes to someone who knows how to cook.  The cooks I admire most are the ones who can seemingly make dinner ex nihilo, and do it day after day without fuss or waste.  I hope I'm on my way there, and that it pays off for my guinea pig family.