favorites and tangents

This post was filled with pleasant foods and memories but a bit aimless… then I kept going off on tangents… and then I had a title!

My MEGA ADORABLE work supervisor sent me this text a few Saturday mornings ago:

 

1. My supervisor is the coolest.

2. Is there anything better than spreading a good thing?

And then having that good thing waiting for you? But wait… oh wait… not just oats in a nut butter jar… oats in a SUNFLOWER SEED BUTTER JAR.

This. Stuff. Is. Insane.

I premade the oats in bulk on the weekend, per usual, and put one of the portions into the nut butter jar.

Pro: soaked it up nicely, no doubt.
Con: couldn’t microwave it in the jar (typically I store them in tupperwares and then transfer them to a micro-safe bowl for reheating in the morning).

So, I made a well in the middle and poured in hot water, then carefully stirred. Worked aight! The texture restored itself nicely. It wasn’t super warm, but I’d just been to the gym so I didn’t mind tepid oats (me and cold food after exercise… it’s weird).

   

Speaking of oats, I really would be totally content eating them three meals a day. I’m currently on an intense nostalgia trip for when I lived alone and had a student schedule and could eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, with time to devote to it and the ingredients I wanted always on hand and the ingredients I didn’t want (like horribly unhealthy things that go “Ileana! Ileana! Evolution has caused you to crave my sweet and salty fattiness! Eat me!) out of my effing environment.

Tangent.

This bowl was oats, pumpkin, and a glob of Greek yogurt and cinnamon on top.

 

Clearly was feeling plant-deprived when I made this particular lunch, since then I had a salad, too.

Farmer’s market greens, hummus, bit o’ cheese, pickled beets.

 

Pink and green things are

1. beautiful and
2. delicious together.

Also orange and green things. And actually pink and orange things. My photographer aunt and I had a hilariously lengthy phone conversation about what we were cooking for Easter, and topics included lamb sourcing (I taught her about Lebanese Butcher and I think we are having a halal and organic meat Easter! So cool!) and beautiful colors (thus, my other aunt’s beets and my Moroccan carrot salad that is my most vivid memory of last Easter.

Another tangent!

I hate hate hate work lunches for many reasons, mostly that they are short and stressful and thus provide me with no satiety whatsoever, but I also hate that they rob me of the opportunity to survey my food and appreciate its prettiness before snarfing it down.

Thus, hurray for weekend tableaux.

   

Concluded with cute little clemmies.

A brief tangent for a NON favorite: mayonnaise. I don’t get mayonnaise most of the time. Mayonnaise makes sense to me

1. With fries at a Belgian restaurant
2. For dipping artichoke leaves

When I see people slathering it all slimy and nasty on their sandwiches and soaking their egg and tuna salads with it it seriously initiates my gag reflex. Plus I just don’t like egg salad that much. I like an egg yolk in moderation (for example, oozing over a lovely spinach salad!) but just… the overkill of the mayonnaisey thick slime and then the eggs as well… it’s just too much for me.

Thus, tofu salad. Finely diced tofu, plain yogurt (Greek is divine!) and, to me, the best part of egg salad which is the seasoning: I do various combinations of dijon mustard and/or capers and/or vinegar and/or green onion and/or dill. Always lots of black pepper.

And snacky dippable lunches are so fun.

This one had the tofu salad'; Triscuits (which my mom always buys) and Persian cucumbers from Trader Joe’s (which are awesome) for dippage; and a chopped apple and plain yogurt bowl (the ush).

  

I can’t talk about favorite things without a final rhapsody on Cooking Light’s brown Irish soda bread. Here is the thing: when you buy buttermilk, at least at our store, you have to buy a quart of it. That is a lot of buttermilk! So you finish one loaf of bread (which in my house and at my potlucks happens very very quickly) and then you think about how good that bread was, and then you look at the buttermilk… So with this recipe, between one thing and another, you probably won’t make it one time. You’ll make it lotsa times!

Make it. Lookit that crumb!

 

And now we appear to’ve transitioned to dinner.

I really am sort of formulaic when I eat. If I had a choice, I would probably eat sweet potatoes at every meal (er… when I wasn’t eating oats. A full serving of both in one meal might be carb overload, even for me. I’d feel compelled to run a marathon… or fall into a coma. Tangent!).

I’m also very fond of my homemade lentil burgers, and having a stash in my freezer has saved my booty on more than one occasion when no one in my home has felt like cooking.

And yes, there is still tomato chutney.

There was a quart of this, too! Another recurring theme!

How many weeks has it been now?

     

Oh God, yeah, and brussels sprouts. Man I eat a lot of brussels sprouts! And I always make them what I now refer to as the “Austin way” (if you want to know it, scroll down and read one of the other gazillion times I made it).

Well and parsnip fries are pretty fantastic.

Aaaaaand tofu makes another appearance. Baked this time. Just guess what that red condiment baked on top of them is. It rhymes with momato butney.

Another day, another text…

 

… and now I’m craving another favorite, NAAN! And Malindi, she is SO WRONG.