tofu with peanut sauce

When planning a week's menu and trying to stick to it do not leave the untested unfamiliar meals for the end of the week. We made this mistake and ended up being too tired and going out to eat and spending too much money. This tofu meal was the last we made and we only made it by the skin of our teeth. Tofu is new to my kitchen even though I grew up eating it. This was a very good filling meal but I felt unsatisfied because I had dreamt of pizza all day. The peanut sauce was homemade!

weekend pancakes

We have started a weekly planned menu. Written out with holiday specific decorations just like the ones in elementary school. It was very difficult. Not quite gut wrenching but much harder than it should have been for two people who enjoy cooking and eating and rarely disagree. However, it is the most comforting thing to know what is for dinner ahead of time. So far we haven't had to order pizza in a panic or eat out at all. We only planned dinners so the pancakes were impromptu (having the ingredients for a week's worth of dinners has so many perks!).

The pasta was day 4 of the menu. It is a remembering of Jamie Oliver's "Workin' Girl Pasta." Feel good food.

perfect strawberries, homemade tater tots

Finally a successful trip to the grocery. A truly thought out list, though often too impossible to create, makes life so much easier. The "sale fruit" ended up being winter strawberries that were perfectly sweet all the way through. Not one tart berry in the entire container.

A day off and an opportune story about a boy nicknamed Tater produced the greasy pile of homemade tater tots. They were one hundred percent more wonderful than the store bought variety. If I can find a way to make them without the house reeking of oil (not to mention cutting out some of the fat from a diet perspective) I will make them all the time. They were just as easy to make as mashed potatoes.

Also, I finally attempted to make tomato soup. Better tasting than canned, just as easy, and much fewer terrible ingredients. Another successful Joy of Cooking recipe.

bratwurst, apples, onions

Last night's dinner was a weekday success. Even though I was too last minute to brown the sausage and it had an eerie 70's look.

i like reading books but not selling them.

Tonight we had spaghetti with meat sauce. It was salty and I couldn't eat myself into a coma as I had planned.

My begonia is going to bloom and causing quite the stir as it is so healthy and robust. I am capable of growing african violets and now begonias. I also have a fern that is miraculously still alive, thanks entirely to the miniature aquarium I found in the dumpster behind my boyfriend's old apartment building. The aquarium's name is Rusky the Dog. Really. It came that way. I have many anxious thoughts about when the fern grows too big for the aquarium.



Also, I have successfully entered the world of baking. These are some muffins in reusable silicon cups that I received for christmas. The muffins were really good!