Category: Cook

This is the best time of year for local green beans. Got these beauties at the farmers market. Tonight I’ll serve some of them with classic comfort food: baked mac and cheese.

Today was our first barbecue of 2023: salmon on a cedar plank. The underside of the board burns, imparting a light, smokey flavor. Cleanup is easy.

Made peanut butter ice cream. For the last 5 minutes of churning I’ve just added chopped-up miniature peanut butter cups. I’m reminded by this exercise that ice cream is to be enjoyed in moderation. 2 cups of heavy cream, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of peanut butter, way too much sugar, vanilla extract.

Cooked for multiple meals. In the foreground: slow-baked beans, carnitas, and pan gravy. In the background: sides for this evening (polenta and steamed broccoli).

Lined up the ingredients for Spam musubi, a Hawaiian take on Japanese onigiri. I’ll pretend it’s healthy: the Spam has 25% less sodium, and the brown sugar is organic. The nonstick musubi mold is convenient, but a Spam can lined with plastic wrap also does the job.

Cycled to an Asian supermarket. The produce section has a large selection of vegetables familiar and exotic to me. Chinese eggplant was an easy choice for dinner tonight.

My walk today took me to three food stores: Kramarczuk’s for Ukrainian sausage for Sausage Saturday, Surdyk’s deli for bread, and Lunds & Byerly’s for supermarket stuff. In Palm Springs we prepared most of our meals, but cooking in our own kitchen is always the best.

We were a little deficient in the cruciferous department while traveling this past week. Today we started to redress the balance with roasted broccoli.