JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

I have not felt inspired to cook in a while. It’s been all I could do to grab a familiar cookbook and scribble a list of a few ingredients on my way to the grocery store each week.

When I read Lisa Williams and Susan Mernit’s recent posts, describing their meals, I groaned a bit inside, aching from my lack of creativity in the kitchen. But somehow this week we have discovered culinary adventures, perhaps inspired by the rest we received at restaurants (what an overdose of chicken nuggets will do for you!).

Monday night, something happened and we had

Boneless Pork Roast with mustard, marmalade, soy sauce and ginger glaze
White Rice
Peas with Mint and Margarine
Bread Sticks (a family favorite)
Raspberries gathered from the garden with sliced pluots

Abigail made the peas using a recipe from Mollie Katzen’s Honest Pretzels, a cookbook given to us on our recent travels by our friends, the S. family (thanks!). As we were driving, from time to time, she would read recipes aloud to us (wouldn’t that make a great MP3 – cook without reading the book! ) or exclaim over her discoveries of honest pretzels and peas…

Tuesday night Abigail cooked Spunky Chili from the cookbook. She was thrilled to make her first meal. I chopped the vegetables and supervised. But she enjoyed being able to create dinner, reading the instructions and stirring the ingredients. It was fun and funny to hear Michaela say Thank you for making this dinner to Abigail, not me.

Wednesday night I made Six More Weeks Sandwiches from ground pork and a can of big bad beer that I flattened (I flattened the beer, not the can…here’s a local big bad beer bear story) I think it was the first time I cooked this recipe that I clipped from the paper years ago and pasted into a notebook. The recipe was originally for February, to be eaten on Groundhogs Day but I think it should mean Six More Weeks of Summer.

I like Lisa’s Family Dinner Night too. Wish we could be there – not for the cannoli and manicotti, but for the company!

Sharing a meal together has an important history for Ted and me. At the time we started dating, we were both part of a Tuesday Night Dinner Club that met at his apartment (he and his roommate had a kitchen, while the other three of us, undergraduates in the dorms, did not!). With Ted working at home, we are able to enjoy many of our meals together as a family each day.

Teaching our kids to cook only increases the joy of it for everyone.