I’m amazed at how much more I can get done with an extra hour in the day thanks to Daylight Savings Time. After a solid night’s sleep, I tumbled out of bed at 10 minutes to 8 this morning, walked Toby and ate breakfast. Eric made scrambled eggs with Saga blue cheese, bacon, toast and capuccino.
After breakfast, I got to work on my lentil soup. The recipe I use, which comes from The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, makes enough for eight to 10 servings. I usually halve the recipe, but this time I made the whole thing so that I could freeze some of the soup.
When I got to the point where I needed to add the stock to the vegetables (onions, leeks, carrots, celery), I paniced: I didn’t have enough stock. The recipe called for three quarts and I only had two, 32-ounce containers of store-bought chicken stock. Then I remembered that I had two containers of stock in the freezer that I had made (eep!) two summers ago when Eric and I were buying organic chickens from Two Spoon Farm. I dumped the frozen stock into the soup and was saved by my own industriousness. Eric and I are going to have the soup for dinner tonight with a salad and some bialys our industrious friend Erica whipped up this morning.
Next on my to-do list (after walking Toby a second time) was mixing up the ingredients for Italian-style meatballs (recipe from the February 2006 issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine), which I cooked in a couple of cans of diced tomatoes with some olive oil, garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. Eric and I will have the meatballs for dinner tomorrow night. I can’t decide whether to serve a salad with the meatballs, or try a recipe for wilted arugula that I found in another past issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine. I’ve never eaten arugula cooked, and I can’t imagine what it’s like. Honestly, the idea of cooked arugula doesn’t send me, but I might make it anyway just to try something different. On the other hand, I hate to waste the perfectly good arugula that I got in my CSA two weeks ago by cooking it. Maybe I should just make an arugula pesto?
What do you think? Should I make a salad to go with the meatballs, or try the wilted arugula?
3 responses so far ↓
Lailee // November 4, 2009 at 12:03 am |
Hi Meredith. I’m an old friend of Eric’s from his MFA days. I can’t help you with your dinner (I agree, cooked arugula sounds dicey), but one of my favorite breakfasts is arugula pesto on toasted whole grain bread with a slice of tomato. Yum. Have you got Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison? It is my bible for cooking with vegetables. I enjoy your blog! Tell Eric I still plan to get to his novel.
meridithl // November 4, 2009 at 12:25 am |
Thanks, Lailee! Eric has mentioned your name quite often.
If I hadn’t made the wilted arugula, I would have turned it into pesto. Your breakfast sounds delicious, an I will have to look for Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone!
Robin // November 4, 2009 at 11:52 am |
Hi Meridith! Catching up this morning on your blog….the part where you mentioned running out of stock made me want to comment. Lately I have been using homemade vegetable stock. Sometimes if I’m out of it I make it alongside the dish I’m working on and just use it as it simmers away…. It might be good for you to use if in a bind. You just throw in whatever veggies you have on hand. We have lots of visiting vergetarians and aside from chicken soup, I have switched to homemade vegetable stock for most recipes because it’s so easy and surprisingly doesn’t make thath much of a difference in taste.