Sunday, August 06, 2006

Cooking for who?

Last night I had this big idea that to use up all my farmers' market & CSA box veggies I would make an all-vegetable dinner, that I might cook for my vegetarian brother. The menu was to be Unky Dave's Potato Salad; calabacitas (a New Mexico vegetable dish of zucchini, corn, and green chile - of course I did not have real New Mexican green chile, so I used Wisconsin-grown banana peppers), pesto, that I wasn't sure what I'd put it on, but wanted to get made so that the basil would not go brown; and green beans, steamed, tossed in olive oil, with goat cheese and olives on top.

Of course, my bro is only here in my mind - he's in Seattle WA - and I was actually cooking for my more or less meat eating children. Besides imagining that I was cooking for my brother, I also imagined that I could cook far more dishes in far less time than I actually could - falling into over-ambitious cooking mode. The green beans never got made.

Maybe I was not at the top of my game - on Thursday I fell off my bike, pulling into the driveway, having had a few after work beers with the once a month, First Thursday, librarians' drinking club. So in addition to what seems to be my summer long bad attitude, I was feeling kind of banged up, sore foot, skinned knee, some miscellaneous sore spots on my left side.

So I sent John to the sub shop on the corner to get day old bread, and made pesto-prosciutto-cheese sandwiches with sun-dried tomatoes silvered on top, and that is what got actually eaten, along with 2 small servings of the potato salad, and one small serving of the calabacitas. But the potato salad is good for work lunches, because it's best at room temp, and the calabacitas can be rolled up in tortillas to make veggie enchiladas. And John rode my bike to get the bread, so he looked hip and European pulling into the driveway with it balanced on the handlebars, and not falling on his ass.

I'm making the green beans tonight.

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