What’s cooking? [NOT 18/01/23]

18/1/23 brightersideoflife 21
Image via The Kitchen Whisperer, who I think used cheddar cheese, because your cavatappi will not be this dark and orange-y. Note the corkscrew shapes, especially lower right.

Hi, friends!

How is your week going? Eating anything good? Still in the post-holidays malaise of not interested in cooking a lot? Finding random veggies and ingredients in the back of the fridge from the holidays and trying to use those up?

Best thing I got going on right now is the black bean and rice bowls I made. Once my dumb self googled how to make Mexican restaurant rice (it’s not hard, but I was like hey I need a framework for shoving more veggies into rice as it cooks. Turned out fantastic once I added the avocado and cilantro. Aside from that, I made pasta with a bunch of odds and ends veggies and some of the roasted cherry tomatoes I baked and froze back in October.

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21 Comments

  1. I made a big batch of fennel, chickpea, and canned sardine salad. I forget about sardines for long stretches, but they’re really great, at least if you’re into fish.

  2. I harvested all my chocolate bell peppers & all other peppers & making a pasta with them.  My pescatarian daughter came back after her sister left for the last few days of daddy cooking before she heads to Ecuador for the study abroad program.

    • How was the yield on those peppers? Did you feel like it was worth the space?

      I always grow sweet banana peppers because they produce like crazy and giant marconis because holy fuck are they good. But I usually plant one or two other plants just for funzies. Cubanelles? Okay but not great. Green bell? Took way too long to flower and set fruit relative to yield.

      • I had a ton but most were small, not much bigger than golf balls but taste good.  Weird pepper year here with our wetter/darker than usual summer.  My grow lights are too weak for them.

        • Good to know, thanks!

          We had a bad heatwave really early and it kept the blooms from setting on my peppers and tomatoes at first, which really set everything back. Now I’m smart enough to know about shade cloth and that might make a huge difference if we have another bad early heat wave.

  3. I borked my back again and just standing has been difficult, so I haven’t been doing any real cooking, just the “chuck a few things in the crockpot and turn it on” variety. Dinner tonight was a sandwich of salami, cheddar, pickle, and jalapeño mustard on oat bread that O-H made me before he left for work.

    Tomorrow, I have a dozen thin cut “sandwich steaks” that will get put in the crockpot with spicy tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, black beans, and a packet of taco seasoning. We have taco shells and tortillas, plus tortilla chips, so everyone can take a scoop of the meat and do as they will with it.

    After that… 🤷‍♀️. There’s quite a variety of sandwich fixin’s and canned soup, etc., so they’re all on their own!

  6. Oh a malaise, but unrelated to the holidays. Mostly I’m just exhausted. Tonight for dinner was granola and a bowl of applesauce.

    So the applesauce: slice a bunch of apples (no need to peel them) and throw them in the crockpot with a bit of water, a tsp of vanilla, and a cinnamon stick. Cook on high untill mushy, stirring now and then. Throw out the cinnamon stick and throw the rest of it into a blender and pulse until smooth. Seriously delicious.

  7. It’s been a bit of a wild week up here.

     

    First–on the food front, Tonight’s was just some Target-brand frozen ravioli (surprisingly good!😁), with Bertolli’s Vodka sauce & some pre-cooked/frozen sliced chicken.

    On the good news front, I’m back at the Grocery store, and we have a new Store Manager *and* the old (dumbass) Grocery Manager recently transferred to a different store!😳🤯😃🤗

    Sooooo we finally have COMPETENT folks in charge–AND ones who will/do allow expired shelf-stable goods to get pulled off the shelves & sent to Second Harvest Heartland (like corporate policy is *supposed* to make happen!😉)…

    It also means that i have an excellent chance at moving back to where I *belong* in the store–Grocery (NOT the front end!), since one of the new grocery managers is the overnight dude I’ve worked with for years now, and he wants me ON his grocery crew, doing pulls so stock doesn’t tip, and facing & rotating goods on the shelves😉😁🤗

    But there was also some really shitty news this week, too.

    My bestie sent me a text yesterday afternoon, asking me to call, if I had a chance…

    Turns out one of her little cousins–a guy I’d also known since he was a tiny little, incredibly adorable *and* incredibly feisty 2nd grader, was shot multiple times & murdered Monday night in Wahpeton, ND…

    Jeremiah was a good kid who ended up hurt in a freak accident quite a few years ago…

    The accident ended up doing a BUNCH of damage to the frontal lobes of his brain (obviously!), and he ended up spiraling into drugs and his life was a mess for years afterward, too…

    Because “Rural ND,” “Lack of Resources,” “Impulse Control Difficulties,” and all the intersections that come with *those,* plus TBI’s, Addiction, Easily Available Drugs (FAR easier than even *adequate* Mental Health care!🙃), childhood traumas, and so much more.

    Honestly, Bestie and I *both* figured the murder may be drug related, just knowing how hard it can be, to shake addiction long-term, although we could be 100% wrong, too.

    It just sucks a ton, because Jeremiah WAS trying so hard to get back to “ok,” his kids are still teens (the youngest’s 14th birthday was the day after his dad’s murder💔💔💔), and because NO ONE deserves to be gunned down in any way.

    Also ironic?

    How many people call Minneapolis–my current city–a “shithole” because “So MANY people get SHOT there!!!”🙄🙄🙄

    Yet, irl, my bestie & I *personally* now have known THREE *DIFFERENT* PEOPLE who were ALL MURDERED VIA GUNS…

    And ALL of those people?

    They were from tiny Minnesota or North Dakota towns.

    Jeremiah Medenwald from Hankinson, ND

    Missy Stammer

    and Terry Brisk

    Bestie and I know *three* different people, all 👏mur👏dered👏via👏 guns👏…

    And all THREE of them, are people we knew when or before we were 18 years old, growing up in our hometowns…

    Those murder victims aren’t folks who ever lived in–heck, they only rarely even *visited,* the place I now live–that “Shithole, *Lib’rul* City!” called Minneapolis–and typically nicknamed “Murderapolis!” by those same sorts who’d assume all the murdered folks we knew were *from here*…

    😕

    Here’s a story that gets into Jera’s TBI…

    https://www.wahpetondailynews.com/news_monitor/jeremiah-medenwald-finally-receives-help-he-needs/article_3a465568-eab3-11e5-95e8-1bf23e403b6f.html

    and, somewhat ironically, i’d forgotten that it happened, all those years back….

    Jera was actually *incredibly lucky* to have even survived that accident!!!

    There was a similar accident this past fall, where–instead of it just being the chain that snapped–the ball hitch of the stuck vehicle gave way, killing the  driver instantly💔

    https://www.co4x4rnr.org/breaking-down-the-deadly-az-incident/

     

    • Man, condolences. I’m sorry things ended up so poorly for Jeremiah.

      You’re so right about small-town violence vs. the big city. I’m reading a book right now that discusses that topic — it was published in 1992! A long-time problem where perception is a big element of that problem.

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