I'm Cookin'!

Another ubiquitous dish, but bear with me . . . at least I've got my appetite back and am creating in the kitchen again!

On Fathers' Day, The kids were fast asleep until noon (teenagers) so I made Andres three nice eggs over medium with some whole grain toast. I offered to make french toast (his fave) but he's been more health conscious lately, so I'm feeding that trend. Besides that nice breakfast, I did nothing at all, and in fact remained in my pajamas all day long. Andres was sort of lying around too, so I didn't feel bad about indulging in sloth. The first Fathers' Day request was that we all go out to lunch together, but since we were so pajamafied and the kids were similarly sluggish, we opted for our weekly Chinese takeout, but we had it for lunch instead of dinner.

Normally I have no qualms about ordering whatever I want from our awesome Chinese restaurant, since I'm the only one who wastes nothing. Ever. It may take me three days to eat two gigantic entrees plus a large brown rice, but I waste nothing. But on Sunday I decided, since I had half a block of tofu left over from my fab tofu feta creation, not to order the Chinese tofu. This time I ordered only my beloved Garlic Baby Bok Choy (will never pass that up) plus the large brown rice, of course. The others ordered their usual, and will waste it or not, yada yada yada.

From my remaining half-block, I created this delicious tofu curry -- no recipe (sorry, I made it on the fly) but here's what's in it: tofu, half a tomato, diced, a couple stalks of celery with leaves, diced, a ginormous organic carrot, diced, a couple of scallions, thinly sliced, and curry powder, turmeric and salt to taste. I threw the carrots and celery in first on a pretty high heat with olive oil. I think I put the curry and turmeric in next, just so I could sort of cook it a little to round out the flavor. then came the tofu and the tomatoes. I only added the onion as I was taking it off the burner. I wanted the greens to still be fresh and bright. This was fabulous and healing (turmeric is anti-inflammatory and my middle-aged back is riddled with arthritis), and went very well with my Chinese takeout standbys.

This morning, after my fabulous Fathers' Day of sloth, I felt like a rock star!

Today's Jeanine story:
My mom was a "waste not, want not" kind of girl, so she saved everything, and carried a very large bag almost everywhere she went, so she could always be counted upon to have what anyone might need. Once, when my family of origin was at Epcot Center, one of us got a cut (I think it was my brother).

My mom said, "Ooooh, I think I have a tissue or a napkin,"

For what seemed like several minutes (I'm sure it was really only a few moments) she dug around in her giant, decorative bag. Finally, success! She held up a large paper towel with grease stains. Upon closer examination, my mom's triumphant expression changed as she was momentarily perplexed. Then she began giggling as she proceeded to dig deeper into the abyss that was her handbag.

"I think that used to hold some fried chicken!" she announced, as tickled with herself as we were. Who knows how long that fried chicken had been in there!