reclusive cook

It's been a strangely cloudy day all day. Strange, that is, by Canadian standards (well, Toronto, anyway) because it surely would have rained, had this been Canada. But no, just this heavy, low-ceilinged, close warmth all day long. The only time I ventured out was when I stood in the parking lot of my building at 2:30 to kindly hand off a sandwich to the hard-working Mr. Squarepeg, who was just dropping off child from school along with her Argentinian girlfriend and then heading back to the coal mine.

Yes, I've become quite reclusive ... although I am sitting out on the balcony more now that I've got a wireless network card on my laptop [smirk!].

Actually, I spent the majority of the day (it feels like) in the kitchen, and was completely blissed out that I could listen to an interesting [downloaded] lecture on my wireless laptop as I cooked!! Damn, I love doing two things at once!

First I made myself a healthy lunch, for a change: salad and tofu patties with a bit of hummus on the side.

Then I attacked the cannelloni I've been meaning to figure out since I bought a box of them a couple of weeks ago in a creative mood. I had bought some spinach and cottage cheese and grated yellow cheese of some kind, in preparation for this day, but I really didn't know if it was going to come out very well because I didn't want to slavishly follow any of the complex recipes I'd found on the internet ("complex", meaning too many types of cheese to buy). My stuffing included a fried, chopped onion, steamed spinach with a few garlic cloves (peeled afterward, when they were soft), a container of 1/2% cottage cheese (I thought it would be drier, but it was quite creamy), and a handful of walnuts. And lots of salt, of course, because it was pretty bland. I put the cooked mixture into my mini-food-chopper to smooth it out a few pulses (not to complete mush). Then I half-cooked the cannelloni tubes in boiling water and put them on a plate where they immediately started to stick together. I really didn't know what to do with the baking dish, but I spread a very thin layer of the stuffing on the bottom, then managed to stuff about 11 cannelloni tubes with the rest of the mixture, laying them side by side. Finally, I sprinkled some grated yellow cheese over the top (not too much, as I don't digest that stuff well anymore -- a remnant of my long years of Coke-like addiction to cheese). I covered the dish with foil and stuck it in a 180C / 350F oven for 20 minutes. I thought it came out pretty good for a first effort; we'll see if the Mr. likes it -- he's not big on spinach though, so I'm not holding my breath -- but of course the kid doesn't even want to look at it; she's still a picky eater and wants nothing mixed up at all. I forced her to eat reheated pasta for lunch (usually met with stubborn refusals) by serving it (together with tofu patties) to her and her friend, and telling her she wouldn't get the dessert I'd made (see below) if she fought me on this one. She told me it tasted like vomit, but she cleaned her plate. -- SCORE!

So the other thing I made was the dessert the WHOLE FAMILY eats (there's hardly anything I make that I can get just about anyone to eat), and that's apple crumble (or apple crisp). I love it cause it's SO easy and quick and I can keep several times' worth of the sugar/flour/oats mixture in a big container in the fridge and just melt butter and mix a bunch of it into the mixture and sprinkle over the chopped apples and/or pears. Here's a site with lots of good apple dessert recipes -- just the first one I found by doing a Google on it.

So now it's dark and another day of blissful unemployment has passed. Things are quieter than I expected on the job front. But my shipment could come as soon as this week -- it's in the hands of customs right now -- and then I'll have a whole lot of crap to sort out... so I'm thoroughly enjoying the calm before the storm... before the calm... before the storm... just like cooking and dishes!