Food – Page 29 – no counterspace

Experimental risotto – Mushroom, bacon, and maple syrup

I think I’ll make mushroom risotto for dinner tonight – so the big question is whether I want to stick with what I know’ll be tasty or whether I want to try to add bacon and a tiny bit of maple syrup to change things up a bit.

I’m not usually a fan of maple syrup, but I think the bacon I usually use (for breakfast and stuff, I haven’t tried it in risotto yet) will taste… classier… with a bit of syrup drizzled about.

ETA: a drizzle of maple syrup worked even better than I expected.

Sushi?

this place in chinatown has all you can eat sushi… I think for $22, but I didn’t write that down.

According to the woman on the phone (who was busy and might be wrong), it is available Mon-Thurs 11:30am – 10:30pm and Fridays 11:30am – 11:30pm.

I work 1-9pm. So I could either go very early or very late – or on a day I am off.

Would anyone else be interested in:

Thursday, November 22 (Yes, it’s Thanksgiving, but I’ve only got the one day off, so I don’t have anything more elaborate planned)
Monday, December 24
Tuesday, December 25th (if they are open)
Thursday, December 27th

And, no, I have no idea how good the sushi is. I’ve never eaten there before, either.

food list of joy

[redacted] – you should tell me whether any of these meals pleases you, or whether there should also be random (KFC-type) food planned for Sunday!

food I have
Produce
parsley
thyme
green papaya (1/2)
carrots
roasted red pepper
cucumber and onion salad
lots of potatoes
1 perfect feeling avocado

meat
1/2 chicken (dark meat only left)
leftover beef roast
eel!
salmon
duck stock
and I am going to buy a bottom round roast because they’re on sale

dairy
plain yogurt
half & half
cream cheese
sliced cheese nicked from reception at work

bread
2 1/2 onion rolls
tortillas
1-2 cups of leftover saffron basmati rice

meals
Thursday, November 15
salmon will probably go off first, so I’ll have that tonight!
Maybe with mashed potatoes

Friday
breakfast – eel over rice
dinner – D&D munchies
(buy an apple and make more chicken/papaya curry (based vaguely on this recipe) to freeze with the basmati rice)

Saturday
stuffing my face on free food?
quesadillas with avocado, red pepper, and any leftover seafood
(Make chili)
(boil stock and put in fresh container)

Sunday
Chili?
(buy sour cream)
(Make some kind of other soup to use up the stock?)

That leaves me with an unused roast of beef – the kind you need to make in thin slices… maybe stroganoff

pondering my finances

Weight Watchers is coming to campus. They are having meetings every Tuesday – at a time (11:30am – 12:30pm) I can actually attend, even with my crazy work schedule. Starting November 13th. The initial sign up is less than half price, if you start either of the first two meetings, and then each week is $14 after that.

Can I afford it? Yes, but I could be putting that money toward credit card debt
I’ve done Weight Watchers before… and I thought it was one of the more sensible diets out there but
- I wasn’t invested in being thin (beyond a certain weight, I started feeling cold and getting sick a little more frequently)
- I got tired of obsessing over food quite that much
My household isn’t set up for it
- I often pick up leftovers from my mother that aren’t going to be measured or made in a particular way
- I guess I could still make large meals and save portions, but it’d call for a lot of tracking and calculating
- there are, less with Weight Watchers than other programs, a lot of cheats to coming to the right amounts that require buying pre-packaged stuff (especially WW’s mysteriously light bread product), and I’ve been moving farther and farther away from artificial food products. It used to be that I couldn’t tell much difference between regular sour cream and diet sour cream – but now I can spot the carageenan and other texturizing agents right away, so I’d be doing more cutting things out than substituting 🙁

Roman cooking

I’ll be teaching a Roman cooking class at my place this Sunday. Ancient Roman.

The plan is to start noonish with stuffed dates and then prep a pork roast and get that in the oven.

While the big hunk o’meat is cooking, we’ll make sauces for it and I’ll let people look through my cookbooks and we’ll make anything that looks intriguing.

I’m thinking there should be lentils and chestnuts… or maybe just lentils (those chestnuts are a pain to skin).

And there’ll be nibbling all the way through.