What I cooked....

(Lest ye forget this is a cooking show.)

Cleaning out Uncle Bunny’s kitchen required that I make quite a bit of room in my own overstuffed kitchen. I resolved to cook up many things so that they would be eaten and duly flushed away, leading to more spaciousness.

I craved cake anyway, so first thing in the morning I baked a vanilla cake. Much later in the day I realized that no, I couldn’t be content with just plain, unadorned, cake. That led to another trip back to Uncle Bunny’s, as I had lent him my mixer after packing his, and then had forgotten to fetch it home again. Whipping cream or making frosting w/out a mixer is something I will never, ever, want to do again in life. Better to waste the gas driving back over. Vanilla, butter cream, frosting was made and duly applied. Nigel and I licked the beaters.

I made porridge for breakfast, as I now have grits, cornmeal mush, 2 kinds of porridge oats, farina, Grape-nuts, and quinoa flakes all waiting to be eaten as hot cereal as the days and nights grow colder. Let’s hope my resolve to do so actually lasts.

Then I made baby back ribs with my homemade BBQ sauce. (No High Fructose Corn Syrup!)

I also made the base for a big batch off stuffing. Meaning that I did up meripoix style all of the carrots, celery, onion, and mushroom in the house (in lots of butter). Ready to be added today to the bread that’s been drying overnight.

I made a huge pot of Red Lentil Soup with Lemon and Cilantro. It’s my new favourite soup but this pot is a little dull. It seems like an entire bunch of cilantro just isn’t enough? I added freshly crushed coriander seed this morning. We’ll see if that adds back the sparkle...

Then I whipped up a batch of red skin potato salad with sour cream and dill dressing. Oliver had previously complained that it needed more oomph. So this time I added a lot more fresh ground black pepper, as well as bacon crumbles and quite a bit of fine chopped scallion.

In between all of that Oliver made us burritos for lunch. So, yes, the kitchen is happy to have cooler weather back, as it was sadly neglected during those deathly days of July. Although I had done some gazpacho and quite a bit of cold salads. It was more of a commando style, get in, get out, situation.

And even though I destroyed the kitchen three or four times over yesterday, I managed to leave enough surfaces clean so that Nigel could do up his continental breakfast this morning.

Today I will finish off the stuffing, to be frozen against the next time I roast chicken. That should be soon too as it is finally cool enough for, what I suspect, is my favourite food. There is nothing in the world to me like a lovely, roast, Amish fowl with gravy and stuffing.... It could almost make me happy to see fall.

I will also do up a nice snow pea stir fry, with Freddie steak strips and water chestnut. Served up with sushi rice and good shoyu, it should make Oliver pretty happy as he loves beef with snow peas. Then I think a medium size casserole of mac and cheese to use up all the cheese ends from Uncle Bunny’s fridge should about do it for a couple of days. Hmm, maybe even for the week.