Sunshine and blue skies (an early spring tease)

Hello everyone (or maybe just one)!

Snow and gray skies have kept me indoors and out of commission for a while. I haven't stopped cooking but I have become a bit lazy, and reverting to my old mainstay of pasta with sausage a few too many times than I would care to admit. In addition to being less than creative, I am also at work which is not an ideal blogging environment, but still appreciate use of a full keyboard, and will make this post a list format as opposed to my usual rambling text (which I know everyone, not just one of you, will appreciate :) )

Things that are great:

1) This shrimp bisque from Bell'Allimento. I love Bell'Alimento, the writing style is after my own heart and her food looks delicious. This was my first attempt at something of hers and it was fabulous. This soup kept us warm and snug during the Snowpocolypse last month.

2) Soul Vegetarian Restaurant on 75th St: I've had some eating qualms for a while, starting back in the fall when I took my Food and Social Justice class that was taught by one of my bosses, who also happens to be a vegan. While I could never hope to be vegan (I heart cheese wayyyy too much), I have started to consider dabbling in vegetarianism, if only accidentally (ie, I sometimes forget to eat meat or just don't have it in the house). Yet this restaurant, which catered our staff retreat last Wednesday, totally blew my mind. There were "eggs" (tofu scramble) "sausage patties" (I am guessing this was seitan and some kind of bean mixture) and the best biscuits I have ever had. Lest you forget, I've worked at two bakeries. Hands down best biscuits. And all of this was completely vegan and completely amazing and tasted completely like it was supposed to, like real eggs and sausage and buttermilk-y, crumbly biscuits. Nom.

3) Serious Eats: I love love love this website. I can get lost for hours here. For the Super Bowl this year I made their Spinach Dip, M caramelized some onions for a dip of her own, and we anticipated making some delicious wings... except that I left the wings at home. Next on deck, maybe tonight if I get my life together, are these little babies.

4) The smell of basil. It is just wonderful.

5) Sunshine! Even if it still cold, just waking up to sun and being able to go home from work and have it still be sunny is an amazing thing.

Hope you're all having a great week, happy Wednesday, and stay tuned for more rambles!

Soup (it's what's for dinner)

Surprising no one (except maybe me), the $1.19-for-five servings lentil soup was not a smashing success. While it wasn't the worst soup I've eaten, it was pretty... lentil-y... kinda salty, and not very exciting. I really think that it would have been helped if I added a can of diced tomatoes, ground turkey, really ANYTHING. But mostly tomatoes. Maybe the same kind from when I made that chicken, those were amazing.

Anyway, the soup I made last night? Delicious. It even had garbanzo beans in it, not my fave. But yum! So hearty. Very filling. Nice and eggy. Fiberous (yes I know fiberous is not a real word) pasta. Serious Eats wins again! Thank you for saving my evening.

The wonderful thing about this recipe is that it is ridiculously easy to make. 25 minutes from start to finish, and the hardest part was getting the spinach chopped to put in the soup. You begin with your chicken broth base, add nutmeg, pasta, garbanzos and boil... add spinach and cook for one minute, add eggs and cook for two more minutes. It was really nice and zen to listen to the State of the Union on the radio while shredding spinach and chopping green onions. (Side note on green onions: my favorite "condiment" ever? I think yes.)

You can find the recipe here. Although it didn't cost me $1.19, it is definitely worth going the distance to get good spinach, whole wheat pasta, and reduced sodium broth (all those things just make a good tasting soup feel even better).

Stay warm! Next time I'll be plying you with creamy shrimp bisque which is basically the furthest thing from healthy... so suck it up now, get your greens on, and thank me later.

Happy New Year!

So I'm already way behind on one of my perpetual New Year's Resolutions, which is to write more. Faithful blog reader of mine, I can only beg for forgiveness. Something tells me you're not too beat up about it :)

In talks with with the other Martha, it seems she is resolved to up her repertoire (what an oddly spelled word!) this year by trying a new recipe each week. I've encouraged her to chronicle her journey here but unless we get a new name/url for this little guy, I'm thinking it might not happen. I hope to hear from her soon on her kitchen adventures!

As for me, I'm about to head on a soup kick. I feel like the soup options in my life are pretty bland and boring, so I'm hoping to try out a few new recipes in the next few weeks... First one, starting tonight, will be soup from a lentil package I picked up from Gene's on Sunday because omg hello this store is my absolute dream come true and I'm so depressed it's taken me so long to discover it. M had visited it before with rave reviews, but I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was too fancy and expensive and just never bothered. Newsflash, kids: the soup I'm making tonight will make five servings and cost me a whopping... $1.19. Let's see how it holds up (it is, after all, lentil soup...eek)! Gene's is so wonderful not only because of their inexpensiveness, but also their crazymazing meat selection, and I will definitely be coming back here for special occasion dinners... or just to get their chicken thighs, which at $2.99/lb, are half as cheap as Whole Foods (sorry Tyrone) and I am sure just as quality. Produce selection was definitely not as cheap as Harvest Time, my new Stanley's, but hey, a girl can take having a nice deli mere steps away. Seriously. Amazing discovery, so so happy!

Other soups on deck for the next few weeks: Shrimp Bisque and Italian Egg Drop Soup. It's nice out today but I have a feeling winter's going to stick around a bit longer... like til April or May. Call it my Chicago intuition ;)

In the meantime, stay warm and healthy! Eat that vitamin C. It's a nasty time out there.

love love,
a