warm, comforting, and blurry

April showers bring crummy  natural light. I do my best.

An ideal rainy meal is grilled cheese and tomato soup. OBVIOUSLY. I classed mine up, per usual.

 

The tomato soup is homemade. It’s a recipe from Barbara Lynch, a Boston chef and restaurateur extraordinaire, and her cookbook. I made it with that boy that time but have subsequently parted ways both with him and his cookbooks (guess which I miss more x_x). But anyway, I did the sketchy-but-legal move of clicking on the “Search Inside” on its Amazon page and found the recipe I wanted :D

  

Sooooooo simple, soooooo good. I love love love that it uses canned tomatoes- so-called “ripe tomatoes” this time of year (tomatoes picked 10,000 miles away when they were green and left to “ripen” in some godforsaken warehouse) taste terrible. Canned tomatoes are preserved at their freshest and best!

The sandwich was also soooooo good.

 

I accidentally bought oil- instead of water-packed tuna, but I’m considering it a serendipitous mistake. Turns out the oil (in my opinion) does a better job of preserving both the tuna’s flavor and texture. And since I drained most of it off anyway (and whatever is left is probably the equivalent of the oil I typically add to my tuna salad), the caloric difference is negligible.

I tossed it with some red onion and minced carrot and topped it with some Harry and David cheddar (man oh man, Harry and David are my great loves). A

nd if that weren’t enough delicious, I put it on some of my homemade brown soda bread (in Favorite Recipes under favorite loaf bread).

This bread is so ridiculously delicious and moist and buttery (despite containing none) and awesome. And even if you don’t bake, you can bake this. No yeast, no kneading. You dump a bunch of things in a bowl and dump them in a pan and then go take a nice hot bath or something while it bakes for an hour. SO EASY!

More comfort food for breakfast, in the form of apple-cinnamon oats.

I added some of my apple-cinnamon chia cereal thinking it would go, but I was not a fan. It made the oats taste blander (?) and dried out. Experiments will continue.

The star of last night’s comforty dinner was one of my favorite signs of spring:

 

Leeks! Another from The Philosopher’s Kitchen, which is rapidly becoming one of my favorite cookbooks. You cook up the leeks in olive oil, then add garlic, savory, chicken broth, and wine, to make a rockin’ sauce. Then you poach some pre-seared chicken breasts in that.

 

Not the most beautiful of final products, alas…

Plus I ended up having to microwave it a ton because despite the juices running clear I managed to cook some medium-rare chicken. I swear, not only do I have ethical issues with factory farming of chicken (this was already purchased and in the freezer- I don’t intend to buy  more) it’s also just a pain in the ass to prepare and ensure that it will be safe.

The side dishes made me feel better:

   

If they look familiar, it’s because they are the exact same ones I made with the cod the other day. I slightly amended the barley by cooking it in chicken stock (it was already open for the leek sauce) and it was even DELICIOUSER. So I recommend.