The Friday Five: Food for Thought

Sure, I might be feeling a little cranky about the problems with my job at the library, but for the most part. . . I feel really good today. Slept really well, finished the second disc for the first season of this show that I borrowed from another branch in our system (really great series--the last two episodes were so well done they brought tears to my eyes--must find the other seasons). I even thought I looked good today.

It was so rainy when I got out of work (later than I'd planned, of course) that I decided to put off errands to tomorrow morning and do my workout and make dinner instead. One of the errands was grocery shopping, so I had to do a little scrounging. And while I was assembling dinner, it occurred to me that there just might be five elements to the Bachelorette Kitchenette dinner:

1. Random: If I don't have a recipe in mind, I tend to fish around for stuff for dinner, or combine disparate things in a course-like manner, and call it "dinner." Tonight, it was the piece of salt water taffy from the library staff room that I'd thrown in my tote bag. It became the appetizer I paired with my citrus vodka-cointreau-cranberry-lime-cherry seltzer cocktail (random again) as I prepared dinner.

2. Leftovers: Especially when dinner is "a little bit of this, a little bit of that," leftovers come in quite handy. I threw in the leftover tomato (from Wednesday night's burger) and black olive slices (from when I made tuna last week, possibly?) into the tuna-nicoise salad I was making tonight.

3. Offense: If you've ever had a cat/dog/significant other/child underfoot while you're trying to make dinner, you know what I mean. I know Bingley sometimes has to say, "No!" to an interested and very cute party at times. Apparently all the catnip stoning the cat did fell away when five minutes later I put the can opener to the tuna can. I had to endure a din of begging until I set the empty can on the floor for her to lick out. At least it wasn't porkchops--those bring out the "big cat" in her to the nth degree.

4. Leftovers, Part II: I'm of the opinion that it's such a big deal to drag out pots and pans (like to boil and drain pasta) that it's a waste to do just one serving. Not to mention it's sometimes harder to calculate one serving than just cook two and cut the finished product in half. So I pretty much always have leftovers when I cook. Most of the time, that's a good thing. That means no cooking the next day!

5. Dishes: When you're the only one making dinner and eating dinner, you're the only one cleaning up after dinner. Man, that gets old. But I refuse to eat dinner off paper plates.

I'd have to take out the trash, then.




Have a nice weekend!

Comments

Dave E. said…
I've gotten pretty good at leftover management over the years. Plus, most of the time I don't mind eating the previous night's leftovers for lunch, as long as I'm having something different for dinner.
Kate P said…
Yeah, some recipes taste even better the next day. Eating the same thing four days in a row is another story.

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