cook and bake more often, thereby reviving the ancient custom of family mealtimes... and perhaps, one day, even give a dinner party...

with shallots and a marsala reduction. How’s that for fancy sounding? It was ACTUALLY incredibly straight-forward.

Tony, who is not particularly vocal about praising food said “that was really yummy.” YAY!

Roasted cauliflower with garlic and parmesan for the veggie.

Washed down with cheap bubbly, which I popped open as a reward for finally finishing my grad school application! :)

Because I cannot resist a challenge!

So far, I think this might be one of the most rewarding goals I’ve adopted. Thanks for inventing it, my pet! But I haven’t really rolled up my sleeves and ramped up my cooking frequency. maybe it’s time to make a pledge of this sort – that I’ll try not to get take out or eat a frozen dinner for one week.

Tonight, my brother Tony and I had a lovely veggie stirfry in front of the TV. Simple, but very satisfying :)

p.s. Tony made that coffee table. With his own two hands! We’re a great team! He makes the table, and I make the food to put on it!

The good news: Got super motivated and made a pizza from SCRATCH last night!! got the dough stretched out pretty much perfectly – even gave it a few tosses in the air – and had some delicious mozzerella and provolone and parmesan cheese. Gave the sauce some extra oomph with a generous dose of oregano. Topped it with mushrooms and red peppers and red pepper flakes….

The bad news: Got absorbed in 43T while it was in the oven, left it a few minutes too long… Some fresh basil livened up the color a bit and we did still polish off the whole thing :) YUMMY!!!

well, my intention to make use of the herbs de provence tonight fell through. Tony didn’t bring home the roasting chicken I needed for that recipe. So instead, I made a chicken salad recipe from allrecipes.com with boneless skinless chicken breasts that I grilled on the foreman grill. It turned out MIND-BLOWINGLY good. And I have enough leftovers to make tony sandwiches for lunch this week or a dinner tomorrow night (which he said he’d gladly have a second night in a row).

I used my handy dandy little food processor to make quick work of carrot, celery, apple, and green onions. Tossed in a handful of raisins and about a cup of green grapes sliced in half. I toasted (and slightly burned) a handful of pecans that have been sitting, waiting to be used for something, chopped them up and put them in. And I squirted in a big fat dollop of miracle whip and 1/2 tsp of curry powder.

UNIMAGINABLY GOOD!!!! served it over a bed of baby greens pre-washed from the grocery, with goddess dressing on the side.

HOLY COW! that’s all I can say.

well, saturday I was lazy and gave in to ordering pizza – but last night I made a quick spaghetti and a big salad. It wasn’t really cooking, but I shaved some fresh parmesan on top, took a handful of leaves off the robustly healthy and sorely under-used basil plants, cut them into little ribbons and sprinkled it over the top of the spaghetti. Cracked open a yummy bottle of wine and voila! family meal time!

Tonight I have the ambition of doing something more exotic. I bought a crock of herbs de provence from Williams Sonoma last year and they smell SOOO delicious, but I never use them. I did a search for recipes that use the dried herbs and I think I’m going to try making a roast chicken with them tonight! Exciting…

Got up nice and early. Made Tony a ham&cheese sandwich, packed a nectarine and trail mix bar in with his lunch and made him a cup of tea in his to-go mug.

Then he got home SUPER late from work (10pm), by which time I wanted to suggest a frozen dinner or take-out, but he said he didn’t want a frozen dinner and wasn’t that hungry anyway.

However, since he’d only had lunch, I steamed some broccoli made lemon butter sauce to go with it, and grilled a breast of pre-marinaded chicken. Yummy, healthy and REALLY quick and easy! Granted… he didn’t say it was delicious, but he did clean his plate.

Made a simple greek salad two nights ago, and last night pulled out the stops with a delicious vegetarian stir fry – had to use up some of the veggies from making the chicken and brocc stir fry the first night, so I bought some extra carrots and bean sprouts and snow peas and mushrooms and just made a big huge pile of veggies with ginger and garlic and hoisin and soy sauce..

My bro said it was delicious!

My brother’s moved in and now I have a real impetus to get cooking. Since he makes loads of money and I’m making virutally none right now, I told him he could give me money each week to do the grocery shopping and the cooking. He is interested in eating more healthfully than he has been (with constant take-out and fast food) so I promised to make him a packed lunch each day and have a healthy dinner each night.

Today was day 1 of the experiment. It went great. Made a delicious stir fry for dinner with broccoli and red cabbage (two good power foods) and chicken. Threw in some spices, soy sauce, hoisin, sesame seeds, red pepper flakes and garlic. It was delicious.

Tomorrow I’m going to try find a vegetarian recipe for dinner. He loves beets, which are another power food, so I’m going to see if I can make a nice beet salad with balsamic dressing and something to go with it. Any suggestions for healthy dinners will be much appreciated!! (He doesn’t like seafood or fish or mushrooms – alas.)

recipe is on eatingwell.com, the burgers are half beef, half minced portobello, with some thyme and bread crumbs mixed in. They don’t hang together very tightly, but they come out quite delicious and much lower fat than all-beef burgers. You add a bit of pickle relish and a slice of cheese at the end, and they’re quite delicious.

I made a tomato salad on the side.

YUUMMMMMM

Had some left over topping I’d made for tacos and worked it into the most delicious tomato salad I’ve ever tasted:
Tomatoes, green onions (the white and a little of the green), red onions (fine dice), shallots (fine dice), cilantro, lime juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, goat cheese.

It sounds like a bizarre combo. It started with the mexican flavors, and then when I incorporated more tomatoes and the typical tomato salad dressing, and threw in the goat cheese because I needed to use it up… holy cow. Mind blowingly good. I think it would be amazing as a bruschetta topping. (boy am I going to love finishing my health challenge at the end of the summer so I can bake up some crusty bread!)

THIS WEEK’S MISSION – to prepare sit-down dinners for myself, even though I’m the only one home. No Eating while standing in the kitchen! Not only is it leading to a degradation in my little sphere of civilized life (just read the miss manners posting from a few months ago – very interesting), it’s also keeping me chubby. I guarantee if America could all decide somehow, together, to return to the old idea of gathering everyone together at the dinner table, childhood obesity wouldn’t be skyrocketing the way it is. Life would be better. I want to get this routine down cold, so that when I finally have babies it’ll be an ingrained habit and I can raise my kids with a memory of a family routine (one I definitely didn’t grow up with). I really think that would be something great to aspire to.