Cooking Frenzy

I planned to take the day off to enjoy the eclipse on Monday, and this extra day seemed to set off a weekend cooking frenzy.  It started with a cherry poppy seed yogurt breakfast cake made on Friday night after work (yum, although the crumbs on top were a bit deflated), continued to the next day with my first time baking bacon in the oven and then making a bacon and onion pie (also good, if a bit white trash – it had a saltine crust [blushes]; Sean thought it needed a layer of potatoes); then on Sunday I made the cupcake part of salted caramel toffee cupcakes and then tried a new recipe for slow cooker cashew chicken (excellent! Would make again); and then the grand finale on Monday with whole wheat bread from scratch that worked well (I’ve finally learned patience when it comes to bread-baking), the icing for the cupcakes, and then I tried a new recipe for a cabbage and walnut salad with lingonberry dressing (tasty if a bit overly crunchy, and it made enough for a small cabbage-eating army, i.e. way too much).

Whew.

I’ve been going a little cooking-crazy ever since Trump won the election; I suspect it is a comfort food thing, but don’t want to delve too deeply into it, as it is exhausting enough keeping up with the news from Washington daily: one doesn’t want to read all one’s actions in light of what is happening there.

Luckily for our waistlines and food budgets, however, I really only cook on the weekends and not weeknights.  Now that Owen is five, he doesn’t necessarily want my full attention in the evenings, except when he does, which is usually right when I started some recipe that he can’t help with.  So we still rely on a lot of very simple meals on the weeknights, or more likely, meals from Trader Joe’s, which is still a godsend.

A year or so ago I satisfied my OCD by majorly organizing all my cookbooks and loose recipes, and making lists of things to try, and then extensive notes as to what we all thought.  It’s a system that has worked well, except I realized I need to make a list of things that I made that we liked and want to have again, because I tend to make something once and then forget about it.  A cheatsheet is thus planned.

As Sean will tell you, my weak point is side dishes.  I tend to focus only on the main dish and dessert and if I had my way would serve the one thing on a plate at dinnertime.  I’m not good at doing two things at once, in the kitchen, apparently.  I’m working on it!

So in a nutshell:  if you are planning on stopping by for dinner, do so on the weekend, come hungry, and please bring some sides.