(an intro and…– Second week of May)
My husband, the one with the amazing ideas I need to put into action, and the one with the humorous blog that needs more content, recently told me I should write about the things I cook. Let me recap. I cook. A lot.
When I was 23 and moved out of my maternal home I could barely make eggs. Seriously. I never had to and it just didn’t happen. I was a disaster. And slowly but surely, combining my love for food and my love for healthy food, I have learnt the hard, burning things down, way.
Something else happened there. I loved cooking for myself, as a part of self – indulgence (eating out of a pan, early adulthood win), and self-care. Once I got together with the love of my life, cooking acquired a whole other level. Not only would I have less leftovers (love the leftovers! Yay for next day lunch!) but someone else would be enjoying what I made. The last piece of the puzzle was pregnancy. I had heard how many women have cravings and how many women nest. My body combined both into one thing: cooking! My cravings (besides for my carnivorous self which awoke once my dragon started to grow) meant looking at recipes and having my mouth started to water. I. Had. To. Cook.
I had just come into the possession of Plenty More, and insanely delicious recipe book by Israeli chef Ottolenghi. And as my preggo brain couldn’t handle my current academic load, I delved right in. His recipes call for about 15 ingredients each, seriously. And totally worth it. I would look at recipes, choose three or four for the week, write down the ingredient list, go to the Farmer’s Market, get it all and cook like crazy. Needless to say, my husband and I ate very well throughout my pregnancy.
The nesting part also included lots of cooking and freezing, for “rainy days”, or rather, “sleepless nights”.
Anyhow, I still cook, a lot. Some weeks more, some weeks less.
I love recipes, I love looking for recipes. And I love tweaking recipes.
And here is where my genius of a husband came in, he said I should write posts on what I’ve been cooking, where I got the recipes, and what I did to change them. S
So here it goes!
This is what I cooked this week:
- Sambols! – I love Sara Britton’s blog and I always find something fun to cook. This week she posted on her trip to Sri Lanka so I made these two sambols, which are basically condiments. One is caramelized red onions with lots of chai-like spices (cinnamon, cardamom, clove), and the second one is hydrated coconut with chile and garlic. They were delicious! And best part of all is that my 8 month old baby loved them too! So she’s been eating coconut and onions like a fiend! #yaybabyledweaning
- As a breastfeeding mom I have these crazy sugar cravings. As a healthy human who doesn’t want to put the baby weight back on, I need to know how to appease them. Ergo, I bake cookies. Healthy delicious cookies. Also from the previous blog. Tweak: I add cinnamon because, well, you can never have enough cinnamon. Also, I double the recipe. Because I love doubling recipes.
- Continuing on the sugar craving, I also, quite often, don’t have time to make myself a nice lunch, or snack, or eat at all. It just doesn’t happen. But as a mom I get very hungry and if I don’t eat I feel like crap. I have different snacks I make and have around, and I will share these later, but what I made this week, yum! Healthy fudge!!! It is made with tahini, so yay calcium to make more milk! Tweak: I didn’t have enough tahini on hand, so I added home made almond butter and it came out great!
- As part of my #newmom cravings I had been sniffing out for a good, dark rye bread. As much as I sought it out in bakeries, I couldn’t find it. So I made my own! And there is nothing that beats a Sunday night dinner like open sandwiches! Tweak: My oven sucks. The heat is very irregular and you need to play a guessing game for timing. The recipe calls for 90 minutes of bake time, our bread was in the oven for over two hours and it could have used at least 20 minutes more. Also made a kale salad tweak off of this one. I just didn’t add dates or cheese and instead had red onions and cucumbers!
So there you have it. These are a few of the things I’ve been cooking! Hope you enjoy and try some of these recipes out!
