May 30, 2020

Menu: Week of 05/31/20

A cranky little rant this week. Yes, another one. Yuzu's pose above perfectly illustrates how I feel.

It was recently pointed out to me - by several people no less - that my food is complicated for a home cook to make. I don’t happen to agree. Admittedly, I spend more time in the kitchen than most, make a lot more things from scratch, probably think about food more hours in the day than average, and my spice cabinet is perhaps rather full compared to those of other home cooks, but my recipes are - for the most part – actually pretty easy to complete. I don’t think that the fact that I break them down into lots of manageable steps when I transcribe them should be held against me. Actually try to make something that I have posted; you’ll see. If starting with last week's offerings, go with the chicken sliders. Definitely.

On another note, I definitely equate cooking with demonstrating love so perhaps my cooking in the time of Covid-19 shows the suffocating aspect of the emotion as I have been pulling out all the stops (Instagram may perhaps illustrate this best). That being said, next year, not only will I be suffering from Empty Nest Syndrome, but I will no longer have anyone for whom to cook on a regular basis. I have always found cooking for one exceedingly boring and will probably find myself subsisting on a rather dodgy diet of salads, soups, and pot yogurts, interspersed with the odd takeout Chinese meal and occasionally just a large handful of Doritos with a cocktail because why not. Presumably, next June this blog will therefore go in a slightly different direction or have run its course.

Until then though, I shall continue to cook away, this week banking on hot and humid weather to lower my appetite and up my salad game at lunch. And I will also continue to be cranky about little things in order to keep from breaking down completely at the absolutely incomprehensible and horrible state of the world, but more specifically this country.

So actually, this is how I feel. Just thought I would share (or in this case, overshare).

This Week's CSA box contained:

Herbs: -

Greens: a lush bunch of spinach, a bunch of red kale and a beautiful bouquet of red dandelion greens

Alliums: a bunch of red scallions

Vegetables: 2 Covington sweet potatoes, 2 Russet potatoes, 4 bright red tomatoes, 3 large beets, 2 baby bok choy (whose season I wish would end as L. hates it but it keeps on coming), a punnet of brown mushrooms and a rainbow bunch of carrots

Fruit: 2 punnets of blackberries

Remainders: ¼ bunch of mint, ½ bunch of cilantro, tablespoon or so of basil leaves, ½ a purple cabbage, ½ head of red leaf lettuce and, despite my best lunch and dinner salad efforts, I am still awash in baby kale.

So, with the addition of the above remainders, basil because I want to make pesto and strawberries which I bought because they were the first of the season, the contents of this week's box (minus whatever we will use for lunch) will be transformed into: