Naomi: Cooking for one and for friends



For years now, even before I wrote the recipes in what I think of as my "static blog," Fiftytworecipesfrommymother, at the request of my children, Sarah and Sam, Sarah had been urging me to keep a daily (more or less) record of my cookings--the meals I make for myself in my (surprisingly) solitary life as well as those I make for friends. For whatever reasons, I've never done it.


But, after months of wandering, I've finally begun. As I haven't quite mastered the art of cooking for one, and love throwing together grand meals at the last minute, I have been encouraging friends to call to check on what I might have on hand any evening for a quick meal. Instructions can be found in my entry for March 20th--What's in Naomi's Refrigerator.

This is primarily a record of the meals I prepare for myself and others, accompanied by "mug shots" of the food (when I remember to photograph before eating). Shot by my phone, with no styling, they may not capture their subjects at their best, but so be it.



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

May 22. Fried egg with asparagus. Leftovers. Leftovers. Leftovers.

The refrigerator shelves are lined with packed tupperware and the vegetable bins are bursting with uncooked produce from the weekends marketing.
Some of the left-over asparagus were a perfect accompaniment for a fried egg for breakfast.  I dusted it with  a bit more cheese, for a little extra zip. Delicious and quite beautiful (if undocumented).
For lunch, there was last night's left-over salad--mixed greens, kale, avocado, golden beets and blood orange.  I'd thought I'd have a well rounded meal -- first course salad, second course meatballs.  I'd heated the meatballs with last night's sauteed mushrooms, and the even older roasted tomatoes (they'd gotten together in tupperware after last night's dinner).  But I'd eaten so much salad (most of it consumed before I remembered to take this picture), I couldn't finished those meatballs.
Long enduring meatballs.
Helping me pack dinner left-overs yesterday, Andrea signed up for dinner tonight (Dan would be back in San Francisco and Sam had a class).  The plan was no plan--just keep working through the fridge.
It's been years since I've cooked artichokes, but neither Astir nor I could ignore those enormous, tightly leaved chokes at TJ"s on Saturday--and it was certainly time to cook it.  I did some minimal trimming of the leaves, cut off most of the stem--and steamed it for what seemed like an incredibly long time (maybe over an hour).   Andrea made good  use of that artichoke cooking time by sorting through the tupperware drawers.  Since my return to Venice, these drawers have been a complete shambles.  In their attempts to help clean up after meals, my guests were invariably thwarted in their search for appropriate containers.  Andrea valiantly took on the task of re-uniting bowls with their covers, tossing out the the orphaned bits of plastic.
By the time she finished, the artichoke was done.   We happily ate it with some lime-and-chipotle enhanced mayonnaise.  That was just the beginning.  The other addition to the left-overs was a new round  roasted cauliflower.  Then of course there was the frittata, a salad of romaine with roasted peppers, golden beets, cucumbers and asparagus and the eggplant with pomegranate sauce.  The cobbler hadn't returned, but we happily ate the brown sugar cookies with coffee ice cream and caramel sauce.
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