What's za'at?

Purple cauliflower retained it's colors after roasting. With za'atar spices. I just like saying za'atar! Za'atar! The spice-lings were not all that amused when last I visited the Spice House. Za'atar!

Holy crap delicious. It was about time I made something Spanish after watching hours upon hours of Spanish cooking shows. Migas, a Spanish peasant dish composed of fried breadcrumbs and "whatever" ingredients you may have present. I made mine with apples and hen of the woods mushrooms. Holy crap delicious. I doubled the recipe that served 4. And then I ate the entire batch by myself in one sitting. 8 servings my ass! I would wager that Spanish peasants didn't eat like waifish coked up supermodels.

Dinosaur kale with almonds and cauliflower hearts. I didn't want to open a new bottle of white wine, so we'll use red. Now we're color coordinated with the roasted purple cauliflower.

Calamari fritto. Delicious! I bought the squid off the back of a truck at the farmer's market. They gave me extra tentacle bits because we agree'd those were the best parts. (And I was doing my best flirty flirty with everyone that day.)

Still hungry late at night, so for dinner #3, I fried up some of the frozen Thanksgiving celery root ravioli.

Winter stores

It's the tomato sauce time of the year. This year's Summer of Garden Neglect has produced much less bounty than last year. But we will make do and be grateful for with what we have. Thankfully, supermarkets and Costco have been invented so I'm in no danger of starvation this winter.

I went totally nuts at the Super H Mart bulk bins. All sorts of flavored and dried and pickled fish products. The octopus jerky and candied anchovy snacks were especially delicious. All you pasty white people gagging right now need to get over your food prejudices and keep an open mind. Delicious is delicious in any culture.

I only bought this because she reminded me of those WW2 Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It." posters. I had no clue what these were when I threw her into the shopping cart.

Tomato sauce. And crimini mushroom tapenade. If I had a basement, I'd totally have a giant freezer chest. And I'd buy an entire hormone free grass fed cow to fill it.

I made Nancy chocolate toffee chunk cookies for Greg's party tonight. I even followed the recipe. It was painful to do so.

Reducing consumption

Ramen noodles with indented space to hold an egg. Like a nest. Very good product semantics. Too bad the noodles taste icky.

10 lbs of garbage and 82 lbs of back seat removed for better fuel economy. Damn $5 gas. The non-aerodynamic box now gets 26 mpg. Not bad for a rolling shipping container.

My grocery purchasing decisions are often influenced by being matchy matchy with my kitchen. It's now become subconscious that I don't realize I'm buying orange things.

Grilled calamari suffered from extreme shrinkage. Sigh. What seemed like multiple portions, turned into one.

But at least I have summer corn. Corn doesn't shrink much on the grill.

And summer peaches. These peaches are only "meh." Grilling it makes it somewhat tastier. But what I wouldn't give for a juicy sun ripened yellow peach right about now.