Foodie Friday

It’s Friday! And officially spring! Today or Tomorrow. Not that a day either way will make any difference whatsoever. Although, I should not complain. The garage is now too warm to keep any food in. Have had to rearrange the fridge to make room for pots of all sizes. It’s so convenient to make a big pot of soup and then keep slinging it into the garage day after day until it is finally all eaten. I mean, bringing it back in to heat it up each time. I trust you understand my meaning.

So anyway, it’s Friday. Foodie Friday. Sorry about all the alliteration. We’ve kind of thrown ourselves into alliterating everything trying to decide what to cook the last few weeks. It began, of course, with Taco Tuesday leading naturally and necessarily into Tappas Tuesday. But then the next week was St. Patrick’s Day which, duly celebrating, nevertheless ruined our two week alliterative streak.

“This has thrown us all off” said Matt on Wednesday, as we both cried our way through an extremely hot Israeli dish of eggs poached in a gorgeous tomato sauce involving onion, garlic, ginger and chili that I discovered online. Wildly, without thinking, having not found the chili, I chopped up an entire jalapeño, seeds and all, and flung it straight in. “It should have been Tel Aviv Tuesday.”

“We could do Tel Aviv Tuesday,” I said, “and then Turkish Tuesday and Tunesian Tuesday,” I had to stop because my mouth was on fire.

All this after straight facedly telling a friend that, “I just cook the same thing every day. I never do anything new. I just don’t have time for it.” After she had gone and I looked down at myself from on high, struggling to make mustard from some kind of powder, I realized that I had lied. Well, not lied per se. For several years I have been in a true rut–Aldi Pizza on Monday, Baked Chicken on Tuesday, Ground Beef and Cabbage on Wednesday, Shepherd’s Bowl on Thursday, A Chop on Friday, Left Overs on Saturday. Round and round and round and round. I actually think the children liked that pretty well. Children are so conservative, in the matter of eating. But then the order of our week was thrown into the air and to comfort myself I began reading cookbooks on Sunday Evenings, and making notes on index cards, and yelling at everyone to leave me alone. Gradually I began going to the store with an actual list, wandering the aisles looking for items I don’t usually buy. It’s all been pretty thrilling.

Also, the mixer is broken and, since I don’t use the phone app on my phone unless I have mentally prepared and fortified myself to do so, I am waiting for Matt to call around and see about fixing it. Which means that my bread routine has been shattered as well. Bread Baking on Tuesday, you know, loaves and buns and cinnamon rolls and cheese and ham rolls. Breakfast Items on Monday, which I guess I don’t need the mixer for. So, no mixer, no cinnamon rolls. What am I going to do? Knead it myself? Ha. No, I finally googled the long ago heard of No Knead Bread and was propelled into a frenzy of bread baking. I fling one loaf into a crazy hot oven and immediately start another loaf. It sits all day and night and then I remember, frantically, and run in to heat the oven again. Only some times I’ve become distracted and so some of the loaves have been baked at two or three different temperatures, with covers and without covers, and with a lot of gentle swearing. Horribly, the children eat An Entire Loaf at a time. So I’m always running crazy to stay ahead of them.

My great sorrow, this week, has been trying to alliterate the other days, besides Tuesday. And I just can’t seem to do it. Maybe I should leave geography behind and go in for particular foods–Watermelon Wednesday, except not yet, or, Oh! Oh! Welsh Rarebit Wednesday!

Gosh, I need to go read the Joy of Cooking. Have a great weekend, if you feel like it. I have some cooking to attend to.