Perhaps the title of this post should say “Lengthy” rather than “Long” – the latter sounds like it was a boring old extended time cooking things I’d rather not have eaten. That couldn’t be further from the truth! Rather, I thoroughly enjoyed four consecutive days off from work (I took Friday off to augment our Monday holiday) … and I enjoyed puttering in the kitchen, too.
On Thursday evening I made “sausage”-kale soup with garlic bread, which turned out to be the perfect on-the-go dish! LeeLee popped in for a quick dinner break before heading back to work, and I like to think this meal helped sustain him for a long night of burning the midnight (or 2 a.m.!) oil. It helped me, too, during a long night of college-basketball-watching. :)
I spent Friday afternoon making a dozen bagels – which turned out great, if I do say so myself (though I’m sorry I didn’t take any pictures!), and for dinner we treated ourselves to a night out, but come Saturday I was right back to work. We had some errands we needed to run in the afternoon, but before we left the house, I sautéed some winter vegetables and mixed them with some barley, veggie broth, and diced tomatoes before plunking the whole pan’s worth of goodies in the Crock-Pot for an afternoon of simmering. This winter-vegetable casserole was a first for me – another entry in my new Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook. And while I know you’re not supposed to try new recipes when entertaining, I say to heck with that. The risk usually pays off – and it did on Saturday! Served alongside some Quorn cutlets and English peas and paired with a nice red wine, it was a meal fit for guests.
On Sunday, many hours after a morning brunch at home (in the picture above, you can see the homemade bagels propping up our scrambled tofu), we went to some friends’ home for a dinner party – it had a South of the Border theme, so we brought along a “Mexican Lasagna,” from the Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook. It seemed to go over well; we had just enough left over for two small servings at the next day’s lunch, along with plenty of tacos that our hosts insisted we take (they had dozens of fixings left over!).
I neglected to take a photo of the lasagna on my way out the door – even though our friends live five minutes away, we were running late – but you can see the leftovers in the photo above!
Last night I made a chik’n divan, since I had some extra time around the house, and we devoured the leftovers for lunch today. Chik’n divan isn’t hard to make, but it just takes time, which as you well know is at a premium during a normal workweek!
Which brings us to tonight – succotash with brown rice and “sausage”-cheese muffins! A perfect comfort-food meal for a night where the ice coats the sidewalks outside and makes us long for our native Gulf Coast.
Stats will return tomorrow! I hope y’all had as nice of a weekend as we did!
:)