good kitchen day

Yesterday was a really good kitchen day; I was listening to music on my iPhone (John Mayer) and didn’t let anyone pull me out of what I was doing. Everything flowed together and even though I spent ten hours on my feet, I wasn’t tired. This is not idle bragging, in my version of an ideal world every day in the kitchen would go that way: but his is not an ideal world. Some days are futile drudgery, unremarkable at best, and others, everything you attempt goes wrong and even the simplest tasks seem overwhelming.

I remembered to snap a couple pictures of my homemade granola, and the Coca Cola Cake, and will post those, along with the recipes as fast as I can write them up and edit the photos. I also snapped a couple pictures of all the snow we've had this past month. I may not have been tired after the hours in the kitchen, but I was knocked flat after I finished shoveling the 6+ inches of very wet snow off the driveway. 

Today, I slept until 11:30am. Somehow it took me an hour to make a pot of tea and get myself a bowl of yogurt with honey, fresh apple and granola. I then decided I would make a large veggie pizza* for dinner. Lunch is to be determined, or rather, swapped for a late night snack which will likely be more pizza, and even more likely, toast. 

*Veggie Pizza – sauce - mozzarella, provolone, parmesan cheese – roasted red pepper – onion – mushroom – marinated artichokes – fresh tomato. I browned off the mushrooms and pre-cooked the onions. The artichokes and red pepper were from a jar (Trader Joe’s) but I cut the artichokes in half and sautéed them as well. I sliced the tomatoes very thin and laid them out on a couple layers of paper towel, then I seasoned them with salt and pepper. Just before placing them on the unbaked pizza, I blotted them with another layer of paper towel pressing firmly to extract even more water, but not hard enough to mash the tomatoes. This technique did two things, provided flavor for some out of season tomatoes, (not my purchase) and drew enough water off that they weren’t soggy sad versions of themselves after baking in the oven. 

Tonight, between the trip to the gym, the cooking, and the shoveling, I am looking forward to taking more than the recommended dose of Ibuprofen and going to bed.