In which there are things I’ve cooked. (Or baked! I guess baking is a different category.)

I cook a lot, for a variety of reasons. Eating out is expensive. I live in the middle of nowhere and can only go out to eat if he (and his car) are home. I’ve become an experienced cook and it’s enjoyable. I feel vaguely guilty about the massive amounts of Doordash I had while living in Uptown (as in, I was personally a major contributor to the immanent collapse of restaurant culture and the rise of the shitty gig economy). There’s nowhere to get what I want to eat so I have to make it myself. And so on.

Anyway, I cook a lot! Here’s a bunch of stuff from the past week or so. A lot of it is bread-based because now I always have bread dough in my fridge!

Here’s dal makhani and naan:

The dal makhani was made in the Instant Pot and I sort of winged it, after reading about three different recipes, based on the ingredients I had on hand. It has a fuckton of Kashmiri red chili powder in it but is somehow rich rather than spicy-hot?

Here’s kachumber with masala eggs (sorta followed that recipe but not really), papadam, and chai:

Here’s a French carrot soup, potage crécy:

And a brie sandwich to eat with it because I fucking love a brie sandwich on good baguette:

And pizzas. Three kinds of pizzas! On homemade dough!

Red: tomato sauce, ricotta, white mushrooms, aged gouda, dried oregano, red pepper flakes
Bianca: olive oil, flake salt, sliced garlic, ricotta, parm-reg, fresh thyme, black pepper

(I’m going to try the bianca with marinated artichoke hearts and post-bake dollops of garlicky tomato sauce next. It’ll be epic!)

And this one, which I made only because I had all the ingredients and did not expect to enjoy but freakin’ LOVED:

Brie: apple, brie, honey, slivered almonds, fresh thyme

(Himself was going to make himself a green olive and hamburger pizza, too, but never got around to it.)

Here’s boule with fromage blanc, olive oil, and black pepper — a new favorite snack:

So much so I incorporated it into my Sunday brunch:

Buttered eggs, tomato and mushrooms, baguette with fromage blanc, cafe au lait.

(The cheesemaker at work says he knows how to make fromage blanc, so hopefully now that I know I love it I’ll be able to talk him into making it from time to time!)

I eat well, supremely well, buuuuut mostly by myself. My better half is in a junk food phase these days, and eats a lot of delicious pre-prepared garbage (frozen stuff like burritos, tots, and chicken wings, boxed mac ‘n’ cheese, ramen, shit like that) and, like, a ton of bacon sandwiches.

Half the time he refuses to eat what I’ve cooked, but I’m pretty sure I did a similar thing when I was his age, like, Fuck it, I’m an adult, and I’m going to eat what I want and not what I SHOULD. I mean, he did eat some of the pizzas and the carrot soup; it’s not like he’s not getting any vegetables (plus he says he eats salads at work most of the time because they’re preferable to whatever’s on the hot table). In other words, there’s a lot of stuff in the freezer lately because I get bored of it before it’s gone!

The complete lack of Mexican food in this post can be read as implying that I ate lunch at Patty’s a couple times last week, because that’s what actually happened!