Cooking for One: Salads and Leftovers

I've only been cooking for myself because hubs has to temporarily be on a clear-liquid diet. And there's really no time to cook because I've been running errands for the hubs, going to the pharmacy or the drugstore or to the grocery store for just boxes of bone broth, gummy bears, Jell-o, popsicles and lollipops. I harvested all that lettuce, and so lots of salad for me. But before the weekend, I decided on one of the $5 Friday specials for my dinner, and so I indulged in tuna sushi and wasabi tuna poke.

I'm so okay with eating leftovers consecutive nights, and so this weekend, I made that hummus bowl for the neighbor's party of which two portions for me are leftover (sorry no pic, but it was beautiful and delicious in my handmade ceramic salad bowl). The boxed broth is too bland for the hubs, and so I boiled it with a couple of chicken bones (because I had poached chicken for dinner later), the tops of leeks, carrots, celery, and onion. I also studied the recipe for making kimchi with that Napa cabbaged I had harvested and the recipe on the box of the seasoning for Chicken Masala.

The kimchi was surprisingly easy and rather fun. I just threw in the last of my chopped scallions into a bowl with the Napa cabbage and liberally salted it with a tablespoon plus a bit. I figured I only had enough cabbage to fill a pint jar, and so I was halving the measurements called for in the recipe. And because I don't have a food processor, nor wanted to dirty up and clean my Vitamix blender, I ground the garlic and ginger and miso paste and sugar in my mortar and pestle. I also added a bit of fish sauce. My neighbor, Cecilia gave me Korean chili powder which I also added. And once the cabbage had wilted after an hour and a half, I put it into a jar with the paste of seasoning. I didn't bother putting salty water into the jar as there really wasn't room for it.

I also put the jar of kimchi outside because I didn't want the jar exploding inside and making a big mess for me to clean as it fermented. When I get home from work today, I'll open the lid to release some of the gas and put it in the fridge. In the meantime, hubs' bone broth boiled with the vegetables practically all of Sunday, of which I used some for my Indian dinner. And the chicken masala is a new dish in my repertoire of Indian food

My flower garden is looking particularly lovely, but I'm gonna pull up some more withered plants when I deadhead over the weekend.

I'm only cooking once or twice over the weekend and hardly or not at all during the week because I'm partaking of those leftovers for dinner over the work week. I like it as it has freed up time for more making, either in ceramics or quilting. I get now why my mother-in-law said no more cooking when her 5 kids were almost done with being teenagers. Cooking for others entails a lot of time and energy though I've always felt the kitchen was where I was most Zen. Nourishing myself and others makes me feel so present and loving.