lunchtime

Today's lunch was sort of a mishmash of what I had around; I found some soba noodles and then some leftover pesto in the freezer (that I had made last summer), and put those together with some parmesan sprinkled on top (and then some extra, a lot extra, sea salt on top--being pregnant, my favorite flavor/ingredient/food is salt!). I had some goat cheese in the fridge, and a crispy apple, so I put that over some honey whole wheat bread (with sea salt, of course). YUM. I feel completely satisfied.

Speaking of food, I've been meaning to post some recipes up here for awhile that I've recently come across. I haunt www.foodnetwork.com along with some other sites and blogs and have found the BEST recipes lately. I thought I'd share a couple of them.

This is a curried chicken salad that I made for the second time last night; I know it's nothing new, but it's SO easy and makes bunches. Jeremy really likes it. (The toasted almonds add a lot of flavor--I don't worry about blanching them, and I think I'm actually going to boil a couple of eggs and throw them in there too, to make it all last longer.)

I love Heidi Swanson's blog 101 Cookbooks; I have her Super Natural Cooking cookbook and pretty much love everything I've ever made out of it. She posted this recipe for a skillet bread not too long ago, and we really liked it a lot. It was the first time I had ever made quinoa, and it was much less scary than I had imagined.

Interestingly, it has a sort of custard topping to it, which was great with what we ate it with, a meat dish that I had cooked into oblivion. The custard helped to balance out the moisture ratio that was severely lacking in the meat. I didn't add the herbs to the top, but I think that would really help--otherwise the custard doesn't have much flavor. Next time I'll try it without the cream; the bread had a great flavor on its own. I will say, though, that the dry meat was all my fault, and it really had a great flavor and sauce. I will make it again. (I added black beans to it, which you can see in the picture.) Mmmm: that looks good. We both really enjoyed dinner that night.

The one recipe that I wanted to make again as I was eating it is this one. I'm serious. I'm getting meat this weekend to make it again next week. I don't think I've ever enjoyed the smell of something cooking as I did this dish. And there is so much sauce left over which is AWESOME because that sauce is gold. One reviewer said she used it for an enchilada sauce, which I'm sure would be amazing. We ate on it all week. (It would be great with the above skillet bread.)

I've really been into making one or two meals a week and then eating on them over a few days. Jeremy doesn't mind, and it's been helpful for both my finishing up the semester and when I've felt a little less than well. We'll be having leftover curried chicken salad tonight (since I'm still a little out of it because of the UTI) with a twice baked potato (last night we had it with homemade oven roasted french fries--Jeremy's favorite). I saw on a food show yesterday that they bake the potato, carve out all the insides, then baste the potato in and out with butter, and bake at 450 degrees for 15 minutes to make it extra crispy, then put all the good stuff back in and bake it for a bit longer. So I'm going to try that tonight.

I never knew food could be so much fun until I started cooking when I got married. It really is such a creative endeavor (most of the time!), and I really feel like I can be a bit artsy when putting ingredients together. Which is a good thing, when one is surrounded by laundry and schoolwork, etc., etc., right?