And she's back!

Last week really put a damper on my best intentions.  I worked out all of ONCE all last week, I cooked dinner perhaps twice, and let's just say that I didn't entirely resist the cookies and chocolate croissants that beckoned from every catering platter in every room of every meeting I attended.  Damn those professional pastry chefs and their evil plans for world domination...or just domination of my waistline, which grew an inch or so last week.  I blame all the salt--when you don't cook for yourself, it's nearly impossible to keep tabs on salt consumption, leading me to feel a bit pickled, bloated, and dehydrated...

But, all that said, at least I did work out once, and while i may have eaten a cookie I didn't eat any chips, cheese, or mayo (aside from a tuna sandwich one day) ... and I maintain that working 12-hour days, hauling ass around a huge hotel from meeting to meeting, and the stress that all of that work entails probably did a fair job in burning a few extra calories.  Still, though I made an effort not to just give in to the fatty that lives in my brain, it's really remarkable how much worse you feel when you are eating food you don't normally eat--tons of carbs, tons of salt, too few green veggies and fruit.  And just too much of everything, probably. 

Well, it's over, and though I haven't had a day off in 2 weeks (almost....I'm exaggerating to gain sympathy, internet, so let me play my world's smallest violin for just a little longer), and though I missed my CSA pickup this week (tears!  I had to work through the pickup window), I did finally make it to the grocery store for the first time this month, meaning I can once again start cooking...and A doesn't have to eat a whole bag of salted peanuts in the shell for lunch again, as he did on Sunday. 

So what did I eat for lunch today?  ....Au Bon Pain.  Wait a second...didn't I just spend three paragraphs ranting about eating restaurant and prepared food, and now that I have real ingredients I go and eat leftover Au Bon Pain?  Yes, reader, I did.  Do you know why?  It's a word puzzle. FInd the word that explains why.

Leftover.  You did it!  Yes, I could not let leftovers be thrown away (nor could I miss a free lunch) so when yesterday's meeting ended, I scavenged 1/2 a grilled chicken pesto sandwich with lettuce, tomato, red peppers & feta, and filled up a tupperware with some leftover salad (romaine, radicchio, tomatoes & cukes).  A pickle somehow found its way into my lunch bag too.  No, I don't remember saying anything about eating too much salt.  

Tomorrow I leave again for a trip to DC, where cuz and I will rendezvous for dinner of either fondue or Ethiopian...will I be brave enough to take photos in public where somebody possibly could be watching me?  Wait and see, internet.  Wait and see.

Hotel Food, day two

Work meetings continue...

But buffet lunches are fun!  Hotel food is never the greatest, in my experience, but there is just something I love about a buffet---sheer volume of food, of course; all the choices, all the many dishes to sample; trying to strategically organize the plate to allow as much to fit on it as physics allow. It's endlessly entertaining...and delicious.

Trying to eat healthily at a hotel buffet, however, poses many more challenges.  Yes, large vat of mayonnaise, cheese platter and salami tray, I see you all.  But my 1/2 slice of whole-wheat bread, dijon mustard and smoked turkey don't need any of your glamor right now.  Potato salad, chicken salad, oh how I adore thee...but just a tiny scoop of you will have to do, since I have to give the majority of my plate to the greens and veggies--mixed baby greens, sliced cukes, radishes, carrots and cherry tomatoes, with a bit of balsamic vinaigrette.  See--not too bad.

I may have eaten a cookie, although since nobody saw me do it did it even really happen?

I cheated...

Do you ever feel like when you take a cooking shortcut that you "cheated"?  I feel like that whenever I use a shortcut.  Not that I'm an "everything from scratch" type person at all....but I'm leaning that way.  I mean, I made homemade oreos once, and I feel bad using jarred pasta sauce, and I'm thisclose to swearing off jarred salsa forever, realizing how incredibly easy it is and how much more delicious it can be than the canned stuff.

Anyway, so after a long work day I realized I not only had no idea what to make for dinner, but I also had no groceries. But I had some CSA greens, I had some leftover pizza dough, and I had a smoked mozzerella spread that I knew would never get used.  Combining the three would capitalize on my miserly, waste not philosophy...but would it be good?

Also, a bit of an experiment was held vis-a-vis pasta sauce making.  I love cream sauce, but have no business eating pasta with cream sauce (got enough fat and calories padding my middle already).  I figured I could mix some milk, chicken broth, a spoonful of the smoked mozzerella spread, and some cornstarch in a bowl, then pour it over the hot pasta and veg to thicken it up and "fake" a cream sauce.  Lo and behold, it worked!  Maybe not as silky and smooth as a full-fat version, but nearly fat-free makes me forgive the texture issue.

Sauteed garlic, CSA wild red onions, CSA kale (not sure which variety), and sliced cremini mushrooms in olive oil/butter; added the pasta and sauce mix, which instantly thickened.  It was so easy....

Leftover pizza dough was rolled out, thinly spread with butter, then topped with chopped garlic and parmesan cheese and rolled up jelly-roll style.  After rising an hour, 20 minutes at 400 degrees resulted in a fairly decent garlic bread roll.

Success, indeed, on the most meager (ok, CSA veggies and leftover gourmet spreads aren't exactly meager...) of ingredients.  Photos were taken, but are still residing on a camera, so forgive me for leaving you to wait for them.

One thing I love about work meetings

FOOD BUFFETS!

Seriously, when do I ever have this many kinds of fruit in my fridge?  Honeydew, muskmelon, watermelon, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, pineapple and grapes.  Breakfast of champions!  And eating all this fruit will, hopefully, prevent me from breaking into the chocolate croissants, bagels, and muffins that are awaiting me just a long-arm's reach from my desk....

I guess the food is a comfort to me as I embark on my busiest, longest, stressiest, most annoying work week....and weekend. 

And, Internet, remind me why I looked at my camera last night and DIDN'T take a picture of the NYC-style barbecue pizza with sauteed creminis, wild red onions, green pepper, and basil that I made last night.  Or the CSA veggie-filled salad of red and green leaf lettuce, sliced radishes hard boiled egg, wild onion tops, and chipotle croutons (homemade!  croutons are the easiest thing to make, and they're so much better than boxed!) that went with it.  I was hungry, and it was really dark in the kitchen, and I just didn't feel like getting all my stuff out.  But it was soo delicious, internet friends.  You really missed out. 

Wunder Fudzen

Isn't she pretty?  God, there is just something about pizza.  Call it a flatbread, call it a pie, call it deep-dish, call it cracker-crust, call it 'za (or please don't because that's just really lame)---it's so alluring.  I don't know that it's possible for me to dislike pizza, any pizza, even really bad pizza.  It's one of those things, like dumplings, I think (oh, the wonder of the dumpling; extant in all cultures; universally delicious) that are good even when they're baaaad.  

I had a hunk of defrosted pizza dough in the fridge for about a week, and it wasn't as springy and fluffy and gorgeous as it once had been, and it certainly wouldn't stretch (hahaha) far enough to feed two for dinner.  But I also had chicken marinating in a tuscan marinade, and I was at a loss at how to get pizza to be a side dish for chicken and zucchini. 

Then, I discovered, just call it a Mediterranean flatbread--problem solved!

I grilled the chicken (skewered) and some thick zucchini slices, then moved them to the top rack to keep warm.  I had stretched the dough into two 7" rounds, well floured, and brushed one side with olive oil.  Throw the oiled side on the grill and let it go for a minute or two, rotating and checking for hotspots and over-char.  The dough will cook (and burn) really fast.  Once one side is cooked, remove from the grill and place raw-side down on an oiled cookie sheet.  Top the cooked side and throw the uncooked, now oiled side back on the grill; close the lid until cheese is melted and the the crust is crisp.


The key, I find, is using a dry dough, small rounds, and very light toppings. You don't want wet dough at all--it will fall through the grates before it has time to toughen up.  Bigger rounds are too hard to maneuver on the grill.  And you only have a few precious minutes once the pizzas are topped to cook them, so go really, really easy on the toppings.  I used bit of mozzerella, 3-4 halved tomato slices, torn basil, chopped kalamatas (on one) and a sprinkle of feta.

Aren't they pretty?

Zucchini Lasagna

Zucchini lasagna...how does it sound to you?  When I first heard it, I was intrigued, because I grew up eating my mom's spinach lasagna, and never knew that veggies in lasagna was akin to sacrelige among some people.

The original idea for this recipe came from a coworker's mom, in a simpler form, but I changed it a bit--including the introduction of noodles.  When I made it sans noodles, you literally had to drain the pieces--not appetizing at all, although it tasted great!  The zucchini lightens up what can be a really heavy-tasting dish into something, while not light, per se, is much easier to stomach on a warm, late summer evening.

It is built much like a simple lasagna--noodles, cheese, sauce.  No fancy bechamel--this version doesn't even have you make your own tomato sauce, but if you're so inclined then do so!  In fact, making sauce is so simple I'm ashamed to sometimes be lazy enough to buy the store-bought stuff...but when inspiration for what to cook for dinner cannot be found, I'm always glad to have a jar of it in the cupboard.

Recipe after the jump!

White Chicky Chili

I'm lucky to have almost in-laws whose green thumbs and prolific garden keep me supplied with all sorts of chiles, tomatoes, zuchinnis, squashes, and pumpkins, among other goodies.  Combined with my CSA share, I always have a fridge stocked full of veggies in the summer that give me an "exciting" challenge every night...exciting if you're a nerd, like me, or if you, also like me, must fight the urge to deep-fry and cover in cheese everything in sight...

As the days of "what do I do with 10 zucchini" draw nearer, I'm going to post a few recipes today that feature, let's say, creative uses for this otherwise bland veg.  Plus, I want to post a bunch of my original and adapted recipes up here so I  have a good way to locate them...right now they're in an amalgamation of hard drives, google documents, work computers, and scraps of stained, crumpled-up paper.  Not the most conducive to cooking when you're uninspired and looking for "that one thing I made that one time..."

This was an unqualified success.  Born in a late summer moment of desperation, when I had 3 kinds of chiles from the garden, pounds and pounds of zucchini from both the garden and the farm, a crisper drawer full of greens that were past wilted, and a few chicken odds n ends...this became a meal we still talk about, and every time I go out to A's parent's house I scout the garden eagerly awaiting the budding peppers.  Recipe after the jump.