Madness in the Bulk Section

Hmmm; let's see; how'm I feeling? Like crap, I think would be the correct answer. Well, I'll take some ibuprofen soon, and make some chamomile tea with honey, and get some sleep, and I'll be fine tomorrow.

In the kitchen--on top of the refrigerator, to be specific--it's two down now; I used the bulgar tonight. The recipe's quite simple--I eat it as a main course, but it would make a nice side dish, too. Onion and garlic, diced, in a little oil, until translucent, then a bunch of kale (the recipe, from Moosewood's low-fat cookbook, calls for swiss chard or something else, but I like kale, and the recipe calls for a pound, but I suspect I had about 10 ounces or so, and I bet you could even use spinach, though you'd want to cook the bulgar then add the spinach), chopped up. A couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and some salt, then cover and steam until the greens wilt. Add a cup and a half of bulgar and two and a half cups of water, and cook until the water's gone. I added some garam masala and some ginger and a teeny bit of cayenne, just to spice it up a little. You may have to experiment to get the timing right--if you add the bulgar too soon, the greens won't cook, and if you add it too late, the greens get grey. And I liked the spices in it, but salt and pepper would be fine, too. You could also add some beans to it.

The next thing to go is some barley; I had to get some yellow split peas today for that recipe (which is from the same cookbook), and I'll have both split peas and barley left over, but I like this recipe a lot and may make it more than once. It calls for potatos; this time I'm trying it with sweet potatos. I'll also use up some of the dried currants, seeing as how I bought them, oh, two years ago, precisely for this recipe. The other things I want to use are the quinoa and the corn meal, plus some random bits of nuts (both sliced and blanched-and-slivered almonds), and some dates that have dried to rocks but can probably be revived in some boiling water, but I haven't figured out what I'm going to do with those things. There's also some dried fruit--cherries, I think--and some dried tomatos, but not very much of either.

I'm enjoying cooking again: I've cooked more in my kitchen in the past two weeks than in the past year, I'd say. It's not quite that I haven't been cooking at all, as I've been cooking with Friend, at his house (which I enjoy tremendously; it's easy to cook with him, or near him), and I've made the occasional thing to take with me somewhere, and I've had my pasta with vegetables thing, but really cooking? From a recipe? So there are leftovers and containers full in the freezers? Not really. But I enjoy it, so it's really nice to get back in touch with that. And my kitchen is actually somewhat cleaner as a result, because, when I cook regularly, I tend to clean up as I go rather than pile things in the sink. The floor could use a scrubbing, and I'll probably get to that after I make the barley recipe.

Meanwhile, the next two days are going to be a festival of hanging out. Lunch with Orange tomorrow, then coffee/tea with Lole (who's about to leave for a month on a cruise ship in the South Pacific!--working, yes, but still), then dinner with Chuck. Friday is breakfast with the Tart, and, if the stars align and he's not too worn out from playing hockey tonight and tomorrow night, maybe some time with Friend. And I suppose I should play the lottery, seeing as how winning it would enable me to keep doing this without that pesky job thing.