menus, February 20, 2013

All of great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Leo Tolstoy

The menus and I are hitting the road this week. Or, more precisely, the....whatever the road is called when it's in the air and the car that's on the road is really an airplane.....I suppose we're going to be hiking the jet trail, taking the plane parkway, hitting the airline asphalt...you get the idea. 

 Anyway, waiting for me in North Carolina are a few hundred hugs from the (adorable) members of my baby-toothed fan club....

Behold! the baby-toothed winner of the 2012
funnest sous-chef  award!!!!

Also waiting? Hills to roll down, stars to watch, ducks to feed, puzzles to work, books to read, woods to explore, puddles to jump in, streams to wade in, and some of the best food that I have ever gotten on the outside of.

Pot-lucks in the South.
the mind boggles, the imagination reels,
the mouth waters.

With all this going on, we won't be striving for originality at dinner time. We'll be cooking up some tried and true, old and new favorites. And before any apologies are offered at the table for food that is uninventive and familiar, I'll think on that little mind-spinning quote of Tolstoy's and remember that all great stories are a spin on one of two stories, and all great meals spin around three basic components: protein, carbs, and veg. 

It seems that from the moment the first cave drawing was copy-pasted onto the walls of a neighboring cave, the pressure has been on to be original. Feel the waves of you-are-a-boring-an-inadequate-type-cook pressure that emanate from this appetizing tome:

Want to amuse yourself?
think of how many women bought this book-
all of them cooking  the same recipes in a desperate
attempt to be different.

It's just that in cooking, as in literature, art and other forms of life, trying too hard to be original can, well....

make things so much more exhausting than they need to be







                                                                               and leave you feeling as silly as if
                                                                               someone had just planted                              
                                                                             a tree on your head.





So, here's what we'll be eating this week, in all it's unoriginal goodness:

Wednesday: chicken, apples and squash
Hmmm. to green vegetable or not green vegetable????...I think no. The squash is a nutrition powerhouse all on it's own.
 We'll be using rice on Saturday- I may cook some up to serve with this consistent winner of a recipe.

                                                               

                                 Thursday:  Roast Chicken, potatoes and salad
In this (fantastic) recipe, sliced potatoes are placed under the chicken to absorb the juices that otherwise would start smoke-bombing the kitchen. I've tried adding carrots and onions to the potatoes with great success, and I may do that tonight too.

Friday: Gumbo
I spent my whole adult life, mumblety mum years, thinking that I hated gumbo when I really only hated the mass produced canned gumbo that I once had at a chain restaurant. I love gumbo!!!!
Thursday's leftover chicken will be popping into the stew, and I'll be leaving some of the sausage and chicken un-gumboed for the baby-tooth set.

                                                                     
Saturday: Black beans and rice
These will go in the slow cooker in the morning, clearing the day for play, play, play. Any leftover chicken or sausage with hop in just to flavor things up, and who knows, if the kitchen helpers are game, we may make a salad.

Sunday: Oven roasted brisket
I haven't quite decided yet if this will be lunch or dinner- either way, I'll need to break out my mad math skillz and decide when to put it in the oven by counting backwards from meal time.
Since the oven's on any way, I'll use it to roast some potatoes and a few vegetables along with the meat.



and as a bonus, I'm hoping that there'll be enough meat and beans leftover for tacos or burritos on Monday. Or maybe some chili. Time will tell- in dinner land, 5 days is a very long way to travel.
~~~
You know what?
Someday, right after I figure out the difference between string theory and chaos theory, I'm going to figure out humanity.
I'm going to figure out why we all long to belong, and will go to such great lengths to fit in with those we want to belong to, and why we (at the same time!) long to be seen as a unique and original one-of-a-kind wonder.
Until then, I'm going to let you know that I know-
There are days when the things that need doing day after day become so tedious that you wonder whether the dreariness of it all is sinking into your very pores.
There are days so ordinary that you wonder if the poets who speak of your life as a shining, unique, original thing are perhaps a little wrong in the head.
The poets are telling the truth.
And I hope you feel that truth this week. I hope you breathe in and out, and understand that
just because a thing happens every ordinary day

Doesn't mean it's not extraordinarily beautiful.