Once again to the lake--or, in this case, the stove.

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been more than a year since my last post. But I'm back, in an attempt to simultaneously regain some cooking mojo and use my Internet addiction to better ends than frequent Facebook status updates and checking the weather far too often. Now that I have no television channels and a nicely renovated kitchen, it seems like a good time to bring back the blog. Needless to say, I still have an overwhelming workload, but we won't talk about that here. After all, the blog is called "The Book I'm Not Reading" for a very good reason--although at this point, I suppose I could change its title to "The Book I'm Not Writing"....

Anyway, lengthy preamble aside, here's what I made myself for lunch:



It tasted better than it looks, you'll be happy to hear. The kale was not black (as the photo suggests), and indeed, could have used a few more minutes on the stove. But I was hungry and impatient, and do have several tasks to complete before I head to the session tonight.

What it is: Bittman's kale and garlic recipe from How to Cook Everything--the caper option. I changed the quantities a bit because I didn't want to generate leftovers, and used rice wine vinegar instead of red or white wine vinegar, since I am only slowly setting myself up with household staples, and this was not a planned dish. Eggs on top are for protein, of course, but they were a nice addition, and the flavors of the capers and hint of vinegar elevated them to a much nicer creature than your typical boring boiled egg.

Friday Night Risotto

I seem to be making the Friday risotto something of a habit here in Cambridge. Today, rather than wanting risotto specifically, I wanted something that would involve sweet potatoes and spinach, two things I've been craving. I first thought I'd bake some sweet potatoes, steam some spinach, and maybe eat them together with some feta cheese, but then that seemed like too many components to assemble. That sounds more pathetic than it is, but I've discovered that in this kitchen of chaos, even one cooking receptacle is sometimes difficult to manage, and the most fail-safe dishes are those that involve one pot and me standing over the stove with it at all times. So in this context, risotto is the perfect solution, especially since I have (drum roll, please) given up all microwaveable ready meals that come in plastic trays (I just did some reading on xenoestrogens, and I don't need to be adding any more of those to my life!).

Anyway, the risotto:

First, I sauteed a small onion, some crushed garlic, some lemon zest, and diced sweet potatoes in a little olive oil. Then I did the usual risotto thing with the usual vegetable stock cubes, and at the end, added several large handfuls of chopped spinach and a squeeze of lemon. No cheese--I didn't think it needed it, and all I had on hand was brie, which would have been very, very wrong. I thought it needed more lemon zest and juice, but the housemates who tried it really liked it (tonight's kitchen was, as usual, chock-a-block).

In other news, I'm the proud new owner of a gently used one of these:



The photo is blurry, but what I'm talking about is not the picture of nuns smoking, cool though that is, but the screw-and-eyelet yoke that holds a fiddle bow together. More important, it's the yoke that should render my good bow playable again! The old screw's threads got stripped, so I've been suffering with the bad old bow for months--but there happens to be a music shop around the corner, and the fella gave this one to me for free! (Ok, I'm fully expecting to be hit from all sides with "free screw" jokes....)

Well, I'm excited!