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.



Wednesday, May 23, 2012

May 23.Chicken, cucumber and roast pepper sandwiches. The Last of the Meatballs

So many leftovers.  Hard to resist a breakfast of tiny chicken sandwiches made on toasted baguette rounds with mayonnaise, roast peppers and marinated cucumbers.  John, the haircutter, called with a cancellation appointment at 2pm.  I biked there straight from yoga  for my long-postponed trim.  Returning home after 3pm, my usual  late lunch was even later.  Needless to say I'd had plenty of time to think about it and was looking forward to finishing the last of the meatballs.
The Last of the Meatballs
Three meatballs with a few sauteed mushrooms and roasted tomatoes were quietly waiting their last re-heating. What a glorious final appearance it was.  Soup--beautiful soup.  I started with melting a few cubes of my frozen chicken broth.  In went the meatballs with their fragments mushrooms and tomatoes along with finely chopped garlic, scallion and cilantro, a bit of chipotle pepper in adobe sauce and lime juice.
Finished off last night's salad--romaine with golden beets, asparagus, roast peppers and the heart of that enormous artichoke.  A brown sugar cookie with iced coffee for dessert.  A splendid late lunch indeed.
Variation on Albondigas Soup with Three Meatballs


After all that lunch, I thought I might skip another meal, but I must have burned a lot of calories, or at least created the illusion that i needed more nourishment.  It wasn't long before my thoughts turned to dinner. The one time in my life when I really gained lots of weight was when I was training for the marathon.  I ran just enough to be perpetually hungry, but clearly not enough to melt away all that extra food--is that happening again?  These are things I do not know in my scale-less world.  In any case, I sauteed a bit of bacon, fried up some of the many left over roasted vegetables from the other night and tossed in the remaining brussels sprouts with bacon and dates for a quick enough dinner.  A brown sugar cookie with a little ice cream and caramel sauce was the reprised dessert of the evening.  

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