Cooking

I feel very lucky to have a child who loves to eat and will eat anything. If I want to make fancy mac and cheese with gorgonzola cheese with a side of brussel sprouts, my only concern is will I have enough for all of us? So my cooking really hasn't changed at all, except that I do even more of it now that we have one more deceptively sized mouth to feed. I've also been doing more of the cooking since the fall semester started and J and I worked out a schedule that has me coming home by 5 and him coming home by 7. Dinner usually isn't ready until at least 7, but by being home earlier, at least I can get it started.

I'm still the world's slowest cook, however. I've been cooking a lot from Martha Stewart's Great Fast Food cookbook lately because the recipes are designed to be doable in under an hour, including cooking time. But the prep times are totally unrealistic for me (especially if I have the tv on and I'm distracted).

(In case that cookbook sounds interesting to you, I should tell you that the recipes in it are hit or miss. I made a coconut curry noodle shrimp dish earlier this week that was really almost vile. And there's no way that the lime juice it turned out I didn't have on hand would have saved it. But then last night I followed a recipe to roast acorn squash, mushrooms, and onions with chicken rubbed with salt, pepper, and rosemary and it was delicious. So I'm making my way through the cookbook - which is organized by season and I love that - and trying to keep track of which recipes are worth repeating and which are never to be repeated again.)

I've also been making yogurt at home and I love that I have control over everything that goes in it. You do need some yogurt to make more yogurt, but one serving of yogurt turns into seven servings overnight. (Or in my case, six, now that I've lost one of the yogurt jars.) This is the yogurt I made last night:

From top to bottom: coffee, apple cinnamon, and raspberry

The two coffee yogurts are for me; I used low-fat milk, added sugar, and the coffee is caffeinated. (I need to buy some decaf coffee to use in future yogurt because I really don't need the extra dose of caffeine.) The other four yogurts are for Squeakles and were made with whole milk and have no sugar added. They're pretty tangy without sugar or honey, but I leave the sweetener out since so far he is happy with them this way.

Sometimes I want a break from cooking, from having to decide what to have to for dinner and making sure that we have everything on hand, and from having to take the time to prepare and cook everything. But most of the time I really enjoy planning out the week's recipes, picking out the vegetables at the farmer's markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays, taking the time to methodically cut up the vegetables, smelling onion, garlic, and roasted vegetables as they start to soften, and best of all, eating. :)