menus, January 16, 2013

I want to go to there

Liz Lemmon

There are those days. 

Days when inspiration fails, and the idea of preparing dinner even 5 days out of 7 seems as fatiguing as supervising a roomful of tired toddlers, each one of whom is holding a puppy and a goldfish. Days when you find yourself thinking

Tedium for dinner again?
but we've already had boring twice this week.

 The thing is, even if yours is the only tummy you're cooking for....

da peeps gotta eat.

and one can't default to eating out EVERY night. It's not as if cheap, sorta tasty, quick food is available on every.....

....street corner. Oh. wait. 

well. The thing is, the peeps gotta eat, and at least most of the time they gotta eat something nourishing. Otherwise, how're they (or you) going to have the strength they need to live lives full of energy and purpose?

whether  it's energy for a purpose this active....

or  a purpose this sedate.

When a bout of epicurean ennui hits around here, I try to hit back with a shot or two of espresso, a deep sigh, and one of my favorite questions:

Can we  turn this into a game?

And what a game I've stumbled on this week! It was a  gray suburban day- the sort of day that slowly bullies one into wishing oneself anywhere elsewhere, and I found myself thinking of places I've loved visiting and places I long to visit....and the next thing I knew, I was digging around in the food sections of online newspapers, setting up a weeklong virtual travel buffet. 

This week, though I won't be driving more than two suburbs away, we'll be eating from 

here, here,here, here....and here

Let's start with 

Wednesday: Washington Post Lemon Chicken

 I love being a tourist in DC! Museums, amazing food, shopping, and my life long crush Abraham Lincoln, all within walking distance of each other. Sigh. I really hope to go back to there. 

Chicken breast is on sale at Kroger, so I might use white meat instead of the thighs and drumsticks in the recipe. And I'll be cooking a little extra chicken to use on Friday. 

Thursday: Coney Island Chili

Great Memory: riding the subway with my grownup children through New York City to Coney Island and playing there til way past dark. Somewhere I have a fridge magnet that proves I was there.

This is the second beef chili recipe I've tried, and it's going to have to be pretty amazing to beat this wonderful beef chili that we had last week. 

I'll be using the shoulder roast that's on sale at kroger, setting aside about half of the cooked beef for Saturday and maybe making a little salad to go alongside.

Friday:Montreal Gazette chicken comfort casserole

Haven't been there, want to go. Maybe not on this January day- maybe in August, when it's 110 degrees in Texas and all of them are humid. I'll be using the leftover cooked chicken from Wednesday.

Saturday:Good Taste beef and vegetable soup

If I say that Australia's one of the planet's most beautiful land masses, someone will point out how few of the planet's land masses I've actually visited. I'll settle then for saying that there's not a city or town in the entire country that I wouldn't gladly visit or revisit. This recipe is from a magazine published by Woolworth's, one of Australia's largest supermarket chains (which is unrelated to the sadly defunct American chain of 5 and 10 cent stores). I'll be using the rest of the beef that cooked on Thursday and  put everything together in the slow cooker, aka crock pot. That way we can play all day, and come home to a house that magically smells like dinner.

Sunday: Dallas Morning News butternut squash enchiladas

The week's been pretty heavy on the meat, hasn't it? We'll take a break from carnivorating and come back to good ol' Dallas with these veggie enchiladas. Bonus: I now have an excuse to stop by Central Market, where I can pick up a couple dozen of the best corn tortillas I've ever found anywhere ever.

Some of you already know that my  pantheon of personal heroes is populated by, among others,  Lincoln, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Wolverine.... and this guy

always a beautiful day in  his neighborhood

How I loved the grace and sense of play with which gentled his way through some of the darkest fears and deepest hurts of childhood. And the way he made feeding the fish and hanging up cardigans look fun. 

That's what I wish for you this week.

I wish grace and gentleness all around you in those moments when you are truly scared or very sad.

 And I hope that once or twice this week you'll find those other things- those heavy, tedious tasks of adulthood- upended by a sudden breeze of imagination and turned unexpectedly into play. 

And I hope that this week, once or twice, you'll find yourself laughing in delighted surprise when you realize that the thing that was a chore has become a game, and that the place you really, really want to go to is the place right where you are.