Indoor picnic

I’ve been looking for good party foods because we’re heading to North Carolina in a few weeks, and we’ll be having a few celebrations of our recent nuptials while we’re there. And I want to be ready to showcase my mad healthy cooking skillz at a moment’s notice. You know how it is.

So here’s one that was pretty successful: pesto potato salad. I made pesto for the first time, and it was pretty hardcore because it was from my very own basil plant, which has been living in the kitchen window, baffling me. I’m not good with plants. My boss has been on vacation for the last two weeks, and one of my biggest fears was that her plants would die under my care. Luckily, they haven’t. And my basil hasn’t either! I was only able to harvest like a cup, so this was a very small batch of pesto, and for that reason, my processor couldn’t really handle it, so it didn’t unify as we’ll as I would’ve liked. Oh well, it tasted good.

There’s my serving. It’s just red potatoes, peppers, and pesto. I hate traditional potato salad, so this was a really nice alternative.

Though I could have eaten enough potatoes to make a meal, I decided to round things out, so I made my fave black bean burgers from Veganomicon:

I only ate half of the bun. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, but I’m just not that into food.

Oh, also tried parmesan squash chips, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d have liked, but were still pretty good:

I ate a few more than this, but they weren’t as presentable.

Sorry the light is extra weird in these, but we’re supposed to have storms and it’s all dark out.

And now, I’m going to avoid even looking at my to do list in favor of reading, since I’m not terribly interested in going outside.

Cheap and easy

I think tonight’s dinner cost me approximately -2 cents. Nice, right?

Here’s my version of Heidi Swanson’s Lemon-Scented Quinoa. I just had quinoa on Saturday but I can’t help that I crave grains that are not really grains.

I was going to make something more complicated but I had a bad day and I decided I could have WHATEVER I WANTED as a reward for making it through. And instead of pizza or brownies or something, I had quinoa. And chickpeas. Served with a delicious tahini-based dressing, some roasted broccoli, and brussels sprouts.

I hope my kids are more normal than this.

I’m not going to bother uploading the brussels sprouts picture because a) you’ve seen it before and b) WordPress is ON MY LIST of annoyances because it won’t upload my images.

Here’s what we had last night, which I didn’t post because I hate Sunday nights and I also got really involved in The Tudors again.

Spinach/apple/cheese paninis with homemade potato chips (more potato-y than chippy, sadly), and some fruit. I actually ate two of these sandwiches because I was hungry and they were amazingly good.

That reminds me that I want some cherries. I used all of the money that I saved on my cheap dinner to buy ridiculously overpriced cherries, which will be my financial downfall this summer. At least I know in advance.

My feet hurt so I’m going to stop typing with them.

No. Not really. But I wish.

Something old, something new

We have tons of leftovers in the fridge, so I didn’t want to make a whole new meal. So, I was all settled on heating up some of that quinoa/corn/black bean salad. But then, we had a ton of spinach left, and some potatoes that were starting to look a little off. So I changed my plans at the last minute and decided to go with the last chickpea cutlet with some spinach and some baked potato chips.

The chips were ready, the spinach was awesome, I was so excited, and then… the chickpea cutlet was totally sick. I mean, I know it’s been a week or whatever, but it basically disintegrated in front of my face. GROSS. So I went out back to the grocery store and picked up some veggie burgers to stand in for the chickpea cutlet.

By then, the spinach was cold, the chips I baked were kind of limp, the apartment was about 900 degrees again, and I was in a really bad mood. So I just served it all up with some of my new sriracha as a dipping agent, and I added some yogurt after I tasted the sriracha and it almost made my face explode.

That’s a Morningstar Farms Mushroom Lovers’ Burger shoved in that pita there. It was actually really good. So I guess something positive came out of this experience. Or, at least, something besides a huge pile of dirty dishes.

Sriracha is pretty awesome. I don’t eat a lot of spicy food, so there were a few points at which I was actually crying, but it tastes good, and it complemented the chips and veggie burger well, so I toughed it out. Matt’s dad would have been proud of me. Also, my sinuses feel clearer.

I’m going to go let the power of my bad mood put me to sleep now. I should wake up in the perfect frame of mind to deal with the middle school group that’s coming to tour the library tomorrow morning. Ahh, 30 sulky 12-year olds. Perfect way to end my week.

But then, there will be Iron Man. So there’s no sense in complaining.

I’m learning some very important things

I’m fascinated by the “blog stats” feature on WordPress. Recently, people have gotten to my blog by searching for: “miss rap supreme,” “diablo cody,” “girl,” and “all my hair cut off.” Oh, and also “brussels.”

The lesson here is that I need to make more pop culture references in my posts so that people find them. I’ll try to be subtle in my blatant attempt to get more than 14 views a day.

Rob Lowe nanny scandal.

Dinner was fast and easy (unlike Rob Lowe’s legal battle with former nanny). Lemon/garlic/rosemary chicken with roasted potatoes and broccoli and cauliflower.

This is the kind of dinner I love to cook when I don’t feel well, because I spent about 2 minutes on it, total. The recipe for the chicken is from a Robin Miller cookbook, and all I did was season the chicken, dice some potatoes to roast with it, and put one of those steam-in-bag vegetable things in the microwave. The chicken and potatoes were good, but I couldn’t finish mine, so I had half of what you see here. I guess those smart chickens are intelligent enough to make themselves super hearty. The steamed vegetables were, well, vegetables steamed in a microwaveable bag. So, you know. Kind of bland.

After dinner, I finally made a Good Choice and had coffee for dessert. Instead of a slice of cake and two cookies, which was what I really wanted.

I ended up icing it because it’s like 900 degrees in our apartment. Which bodes really well for the summer.

I ended up having some peanut butter to complement this. I can’t be perfect ALL THE TIME.

And, now you all know that I completely lack pop culture knowledge because I can’t think of anything except that Rob Lowe thing, and that’s only because I randomly saw it scroll across a screen yesterday, and then my sister confirmed it for me.

I just asked Matt to help me, because he does a lot more reading of the internet at large than I do. Here’s how it went:

Me: What’s something pop cultural that I can reference?

Matt: Secret Invasion.

Me: That’s a comic. I mean, like, an event.

Matt: It’s an event comic. It’s the crossover event of the year. God.

So, okay, here’s my final attempt.

Secret Invasion spoilers.

Actually, I think I’m going to go hide stuff like “Suri Cruise” and “Jamie Lynn Spears” in my code. That’s pop culture, right? People still care about them

Sno’ boyz

Last night, I had one of those terrifying restaurant moments where there was a fourteen-way tie for what I wanted to order and the waitress was there waiting for me to decide and all I could think was “WHAT IF I CHOOSE THE WRONG ONE?” Although, honestly, everything I was considering came with tater tots as a side option, so it would’ve been hard to go wrong.

What I went with was some kind of chicken sandwich with pizza sauce and mushrooms. And, tater tots, obvs.

Do people still say that?

One of the other options I considered was a shrimp po’ boy, but their version had fried shrimp, and I happen to have a delicate constitution that doesn’t handle fried food well. There’s another restaurant in town that does a non-fried bbq shrimp po’ boy that I loooooooove, and it comes with “taters,” which are basically potatoes with a bunch of cheese and something saucy and, sadly, I just learned that the saucy business contains pork, which I don’t eat. Luckily, I don’t really eat there often because it smells weird.

There’s a point to this.

We were going to go out to dinner tonight, because our heat stopped working last night sometime and the house was freezing. But, by the time I got home from work, the landlord had fixed it, so we stayed in. They’re calling for snow overnight, and it’s freezing outside, so we settled in for a night of TV and some homemade po’ boys.

I made my own version of the meal I described earlier, minus the bbq sauce (I don’t typically have that around) and the grease and pork associated with the real “taters.”

Jenny-style taters with chili powder, cumin and, of course, cheese:

(I know it’s not a good picture, but I put it up anyway, because I think they look kind of… ON FIRE)

Grilled shrimp po’ boy with red peppers:

And here’s the whole thing. On a stool. With some steamed broccoli (with cheese), because I wanted to use my new steamer, and because I was feeling a little guilty about having double desserts at lunch. Of course, in the end, that didn’t stop me from making myself 4 no-bake cookies that I saw featured on Couch Cubicle. No pictures, because the cookies magically disappeared.

It was really good. Matt ate three po’ boys, so that’s a solid yes vote.

BIG NEWS.

A shirt that I personally own was actually featured in an episode of What Not To Wear. Like, as an example of a good thing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bragging about it.

Tara and I sent our chapter to the editor yesterday, so I’ve got this weekend to kick back and relax a little bit. I guess I’ll finish my taxes. But I’m only in it for the return.

Now, we’ll wait for the snow. And try not to hate our families, who enjoyed 80 degree weather in North Carolina today.