25 recipes down, 235 days to go
Tuesday, October 6th.
If you are looking at the time passed between posts, you can see that last week I made no recipes.
There was no cooking being done.
This was mainly because we had a TON of food left over from Yom Kippur, which was Monday, October 28th. I am highly sensitive to two things: food waste, and unnecessary spending of money. So I took a week off. It was also meant as extra time for me to get up to date on my posts which were building up, now over 3 weeks behind.
That didn't go so well.
It turned out to be a tough week, mentally. I really just had no motivation to do anything. Definitely no creativity and patience needed to type up posts.
And I felt fat. I had eaten way too much kugel then I considered healthy. Demons were multiplying in my head, inciting negative thoughts.
No good. I decided to make the following recipe—in hopes of reversing this black spiral I had thought myself into.
Meyer Lemon Romanesco Glow Salad
The First Mess
Laura Wright pens this salad as one that she makes "when we've been on an indulgent streak or right after the holidays when our taste buds and stomachs need a break."
I needed a break. I thought this clean, fresh salad would make me feel better about myself.
This was a relatively easy salad to make. The head of romanesco broccoli was eaten raw in the salad—blitzed into a couscous-like texture in a food processor. I was skeptical about the raw broccoli.
Anyways, I think I pulsed it a tad too long. Damn it. The pieces lost that unevenness that lends texture. They were uniformly tiny.
The most memorable thing I learned was that I had been counting green onions wrong this whole time! Ahh! Holy moly, one green onion is not one green stem, it's all the green stems attached to one white bulb! I had hated green onions all this time because there were always so many left over. Food waste alert! Well, I was laughing and thinking to myself that this little clear-up would help take care of that problem.
After I learned this shocking information, I thought I had probably also been cutting them wrong.
I realized I had a page of knife skills bookmarked that I'd stumbled across previously. I decided to check it out. This page has turned out to be a gift from heaven! It has short 1 minute videos of how to prep all sorts of different vegetables. Trying to read through instructions is SO frustrating, and these videos were AMAZING. I finally had a visual reference—which was SO helpful! I could do each step with her, at the same time. The videos are short, simple, and so easy to follow. They couldn't be more well done.
For fellow amateurs of vegetables: https://www.acouplecooks.com/basic-knife-skills-for-home-cooks/
I watched the tutorial video on slicing green onions (https://www.acouplecooks.com/how-to-cut-green-onions/), cutting mine at the same time. It was quick and painless. Wow, I was amazed at how easy it was following her efficient technique.
It was already almost 1pm by the time I had taken photos and served my mom and dad a plate. I had made this salad on my lunch break, and at 1pm classes started again.
So I ate the rest of mine in my office during math.
I had forgotten how good grapes are. The grapes and the toasted walnuts brought everything together really nicely. I didn't mind the raw broccoli at all. That's one way to sneak in veggies: make them miniscule! It was a touch sweet and a touch tangy from the apple and lemon.
My mom and dad both enjoyed it.
About an hour after eating it, my stomach felt a little queasy. I had eaten raw cruciferous vegetable. But I didn't mind that too much. It wasn't like I was going to be eating this every day. My stomach felt better by the afternoon.
Did I feel better?
That's a hard question to answer. In answer, I felt proud of myself for eating something good for my body. I felt like it was in my control to eat healthy food. And it reminded me of how good healthy food can taste.