Things I didn’t give up for Lent
This could be a long post, because I don’t believe in giving things up. It’s all about moderation. Unless it’s crack, and your Charlie Sheen. Because no one will be interested in you anymore; start practicing moderation and there go all of your 2 million Twitter followers.
No, but honestly, I haven’t given up my blog for Lent. Or at all. And I have more to write about than poorly executed attempts at jokes to prove I still am slightly in tune with pop culture.
It’s been a busy week, but Courtney is here for Spring Break (who wants to go on a cruise when you can stay at the luxurious Pink Palace bed & breakfast/resort?) and I much prefer cooking for two, so I’ve actually fit a few good meals into our schedule right between the Biergarten trivia (we tied for last) and a dinner party at the Cook’s. My goal was to buy as few ingredients as possible, and I did a pretty good job. These two recipes work great together; some of the ingredients overlap and they both serve six, so I cut them both in half and had just the right amount for the two of us (yeah, yeah, you do the math. Who really eats a serving size?)
On Monday night, I made this Orange-Tomato Couscous with Chicken from the Eating Well magazine that showed up at my doorstep the other day.
This recipe will definitely make “the book.” “The book” is actually a binder. The summer I started cooking (2006) I started collecting recipes in a three-ring binder. If I liked them enough to make again, they got glued on a page of construction paper, roughly color coded by type of meal. Now most of my recipes are saved in equally neurotically sorted favorite folders on my laptop, but I still throw recipes in the book when I pull them from magazines, but they rarely get glued anymore, mostly because I’m out of construction paper.
Tonight I made this Turkey Tamale Potpie, one of my long time favorites that is the perfect way to end a rainy day. This has actually been in my repertoire long enough that it’s glued into the book. So old school. The first time I made this, we all sat around the table making grunting noises as we ate. It’s that good.
