This week in the kitchen...

So you can see that every once in a while I blog about cooking. I'm going to try to write about cooking more often, perhaps once a week, and do my best to inspire others, we'll see how it goes. I love cooking. I'm not a natural cook, I just know how to read recipes and prefer to cook rather than eat on the streets too frequently. In preparing for my return to work, I've gone through a year of slow cooking and picked out some recipes to try. I love my slow cooker but don't have too many recipes that I like using it and want to throw dinner together before I leave in the morning so that I'm not slaving in the kitchen while I should be cuddling with my son after work.

So on Sunday morning I made breakfast risotto. And I did it at 2 in the morning after nursing Tre so that it would be ready when we woke. I didn't let the butter melt and used the only crock I have which is 6 quarts instead of the smaller recommended without cutting down the cook time so it burned a little but not too bad. The rice broke up but the apples were good. When I tasted it it wasn't sweet enough so I added sugar. The result was a super sweet porridge that needed lots more milk. We did end up eating it all for breakfast throughout the week.

Then after that I made Indian lentils for dinner. I let Jorge choose and was surprised he chose this because I made a different version 2 years ago and he hated it. Well guess what, he wasn't a fan of this one either. I liked it but it made way too much for the two of us and it's not something to eat every day. We ate it for dinner 3 days then I finished if for lunch the next.

Monday I made yogurt.

Wednesday I made beef bourguignon. After watching Julia and Julie my sister-in-law said she wanted to make it which made me want to try it. I never knew of it before the movie! My brother came over to bring me squid and stayed for dinner. We all enjoyed it. It was very tasty. I doubled the carrots and would have liked even more.

Thursday... so back to my brother's visit last night... he's quite the fisherman. He occasionally goes out on the Pacific Ocean with his friends to fish. Since Jorge is such a seafood guy, Nick brings his catch over here and I'll cook it up for tacos or ceviche. Last Thursday he brought yellow tail to my mom's and grilled it up for us. Delicious. I had never had it before and although it was chewy like a steak (a texture I'm not used to in fish) I loved it. So two nights ago he went out over night and caught Humboldt squid. I'm still waiting for his buddy to forward me the pictures. He went around giving it to his friends and family and left us with 3 huge fillets. I have cooked squid once before but it was regular sized not jumbo. So I read up on it and couldn't find much info but did what I found which was cut a thin layer off of both sides of the fillet to take off the hard part which if left on would make it taste like vinyl. Then I soaked them overnight in milk. And today my brother came over to pound them with a meat tenderizer; we cut them up, battered and fried them. They came out great, all was eaten up but don't want to do that for a while. I'm not that into seafood. Squid is a once or twice a year thing for me.

Up next...

Friday I'll be making pasta fagioli. And over the weekend I'll make lactation cookies, which I made once early postpartum and were delicious, to snack on at work and keep my supply up.