Cooking: Reading and Food as Central to Life

Some years ago, hubs got me a Kindle, and I did use it to read until I lost its power cord and didn't replace, but I also continued to read physical books. There's something more appealing about paper, book board, fonts, pictures, illustrations and the heft of hard print in your hands. Before afternoon reading, I got some soaked garbanzos to simmering and then went outside into the hubs’ bonsai garden, poring through all the wonderful hardcover, vegetable-forward or vegetarian cookbooks: the pages were toothy, almost like cardstock, and contained gorgeous photography to go with the mouthwatering recipes and wonderful narratives that mirror the short stories I want in my own existence. 

Of the cookbooks below, Kinfolk Table was my least favorite. The recipes were as insipid as the boring text and photographs showcasing the pretentious AF, social media-tinged lifestyle of a couple of hipsters whom I find soulless. But I did love Ottolenghi's recipes (and was in fact making his recipe for hummus while poring through these cookbook picks). However, his recipes in Flavor seem a bit unattainable to me though it along with his other cook books also puts his restaurant in London on my travel bucket list. Jeremy Fox's On Vegetables was my next favorite, and maybe I'll cook one of his recipes this weekend as I do have Napa cabbage, broccoli, purple cauliflower, radishes and 3 kinds of mushrooms in my fridge. Six Seasons was by far my favorite cook book, and if I decide to get rid of any of the cook books on my shelf now, I would consider owning this one. I'll post pics of the vegetables I do cook from recipes in any of these books.

I had intended to make spanakopita because I have fresh dill and a small chunk of feta in my fridge that I wanted to use up, but I still would have had to make a run for phyllo dough. Nope. I've been running to grocery store even in this pandemic when I lacked an ingredient for a recipe, and I was determined this time to use what I have. I did have puff pastry instead of phyllo in my freezer, and so I scoured the internet for recipes and decided to make spinach hand pies. Took me all afternoon and part of the dinner hour for them to bake. And for the last few minutes, I added a couple skewers of Mediterranean chicken to the sheet pan to complete dinner. 

Hubs does not care for Greek salad (made the day before to use up cucumbers before they went soft and the remains of roasted gold bell pepper) or hummus (which I finished making after cook book reading by whirring it with the last of tahini, a garlic clove, the juice of a Meyer lemon along with cumin, coriander, hot smoked paprika, and salt) and so those viands went onto my plate, along with some Calabrian chili paste and whole milk Greek yogurt. And dagnabit, I forgot to use up the dill in my spinach hand pies.

Hubs did compliment me on his dinner of chicken and spinach pie, and I didn't disclose that his least favorite cheese of feta was in the pie--but I also extended the spinach with ricotta and some leftover grated cheddar cheese. Lots of cheese scraps in my fridge which calls for fromage fort.