Sprouty, alien invader potatoes

And made them look like this:

Saved potatoes, roasted

And then we ate them with this:

Scrambled eggs with asparagus

Quite satisfying, really. Al did ask if I’d bought like 45 pounds of asparagus, because “you’ve been putting it in everything, mom”. He’s right – we had shrimp & asparagus pasta last Sunday, asparagus pizza on Friday, and eggs with asparagus today.  But I didn’t buy like 45 pounds of asparagus; Molly & David brought us like 45 pounds of asparagus as a hostess gift on Passover.

And, mmm, at about 3:30, I ate the last two pieces of potato, room temp, with the last little hunk of bacon – the potatoes had gotten this lovely flour-y texture on the insides, almost creamy.

It was the winter dance at the high school last night, and, since we live so close to school, our exchange student had made plans to cook dinner with 3 of the other girls – two from Italy, ours from the Netherlands, and another from Finland. We left them picking nail polish and getting ready to cook, and Mark drove me to the urgent care, where I got fitted for  a lovely stiff-soled shoe. I’m supposed to wear the thing for 4 – 6 weeks!?? Keep the foot elevated, no ibuprofen, no long walks, etc. Hard to adhere to for someone like me, walking is my main form of exercise, and I work at my computer standing up, mostly, and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, standing up. I stayed off my foot a lot last night, though, and it feels much better today.

I’m thinking I will follow the rules for about a week – bus and drive to work, work sitting down more, etc. The doctor at urgent care also talked a lot about “buddy-taping” – taping my broke toe to the one next to it -  and I think I will shift to that, and regular shoes, as soon as I can. I think the main thing is it’s going to hurt if I’m doing the wrong things, so as long as I make sure not to make the toe hurt, I’ll heal OK.

And, I kind of liked lying on the couch and ordering everyone around last night. I only got up to eat and clean up – they did everything else.

The kids made roasted rosemary potatoes, spinach salad, and chicken. We ate the leftover potatoes with blueberry pancakes for breakfast and I think tonight we’ll get a really good soup from the chicken leftovers – and I’ll do as much as I can from the couch.

So I’m on my own. This morning I braved the rain and cold and went to the first farmers’ market; bought some potatoes from Matt - his daughter’s in college in Boston, so we talked, and spinach from Sung Haven, and Willi’s Swiss cheese.

But I didn’t brave the tea partiers, and go back down and protest at noon. Sounds like they were good and outnumbered, but Bill Lueders’ coverage just gives me that angry feeling, when you’re being misunderstood, and there’s no way on earth you can explain well enough to make those people get it. I mean, get rid of those freeloading teachers who don’t pay any taxes?? The world is going in the toilet anyway, so get rid of the EPA, too.

After the market, I came home and had a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.

Oatmeal with apples and raisons and brown sugar

Those raisons were marked “Flame” raisons – I guess made from Flame red grapes – and they were a little seedy. I bought some new ones at the co-op and threw the last of bag away – composted it actually.

I found out that the last update to my food & exercise diary iPhone app included a bar code scanner – so I amused myself scanning in some of the food in my breakfast – like the organic valley milk.

I tried to take an iPhone movie of the few snowflakes that fell. I weeded my drawers and the hall closet, and brought up ta box and a bag from the basement and filled the whole hatchback of the car with clothes for goodwill. After dropping off at goodwill, I forced myself to go to the pool – I had the I don wannies. My ears and neck are sore from a tetnus shot & sinus infection. I thought it’d be really crowded at the Y, because it’s so nasty out, weatherwise (and otherwise) but it’s the Madison schools spring break so I had a whole lane to myself. So, I went and of course felt way better after swimming for 30 minutes.

I shopped at Willy St. on my way home from the pool. Since I got new this morning, I cooked last week’s spinach with Indian spices and made the last of the old potatoes, replaced by the new ones from Matt, into Indian mashed potatoes, both recipes from the vegetables section of my from my Madhur Jaffrey easy Indian book.

Indian mashed taters and spinach

Now I’m going to go pay $3 to watch Liam Neeson with no memory at the cheap theater. But I better go bring in the mail, first.

I definitely didn’t go to the demonstration at the Capitol – I thought that would really negate the health benefits of staying in bed. The report is that thousands of others showed up, so I guess my absence is OK.

I made these potatoes from How To Eat Supper (cover recipe), but instead of eating them tonight, I tipped them (as the Brit cookbooks would say) into a casserole dish, so we can have them for supper tomorrow after yoga.

I kinda tried to keep up on email, and my online courses & students. I have to write a Willy St. Co-op Reader report (‘cuz I’m on the Board) and that’s about half done, due tomorrow.

Overall, I feel guilty – ate too much, didn’t do enough – and not nearly as restored as I think I should from my sick day. Maybe there’s something good on TV.

Potatoes

Cats on the sunroom couch

Last night for supper I made Dorie Greenspan’s pommes dauphinois – potatoes cooked in cream with Gruyere cheese on top. My next attempt for the Friday’s With Dorie virtual cooking club. I liked them. I was worried about the cream to potato ratio – it was supposed to be 2 to 2 1/4 lbs. spuds to 1 3/4 cup cream, and of course I don’t have a kitchen scale, so I had to guess at the weight of the potatoes. I used less than I thought I should; about 7 potatoes that ranged from smallish to fist-sized. I didn’t want to haul out the mandolin, so I used the food processor. I only have a 4mm slicing blade, so I think I could have done just as well with a knife, but the machine sure was fast. We made the potatoes our main course, which suited their richness. I’m still working on using up Pie Palooza greens so we had a big salad, and an Asian-flavored slaw, that I wasn’t so happy with. The dressing had sushi ginger and oil, regular & sesame (I was out of regular vegetable oil, so I used almond, and a few tablespoons sesame oil for seasoning)and rice vinegar, and it had chopped peanuts in it. I think I would’ve liked it better with peanut butter in the dressing, too.

The stuffed French toast was really good – a recipe clipped from the Milwaukee newspaper – the stuffing was just Door County cherries mashed into softened cream cheese. And those Willow Creek folks really know how to season a sausage!

On Saturday I made fishcakes with the last of the same mashed potatoes, and some Tilapia that I got frozen from the coop that turned out to be really nice fish. It smelled really sweet, like scallops, not fishy at all. The recipe was from what is apparently the last Waitrose Food Illustrated to come to my door – this press release says “a new look” for the mag, but the letter inside my March issue said the new Waitrose Kitchen will be sold in stores only. From an article on how this clever mum keeps both hubby and kiddies happy & well fed – fish fingers and mash for the kids, fishcakes (made from leftover mash) and watercress salad for  mummy & daddy. we ate ours with watercress salad, too – Matt Smith’s cress from the indoor winter market. Then we went to see Alice. I liked it – Tim Burton’s fantasy on parade.

On Sunday I made power bars a la Heidi to send to my brother for this years bike race. I put in candied ginger and chocolate chips – that melted a little more than I wanted; they came out like allover chocolate power bars, instead of chocolate chip – and powdered instant espresso instead of ground, and I made 3x the recipe in one big half sheet pan, 65 chubby little bars. I also made brownies glazed with melted chocolate and heath bar chips, and BBQ Tofu and slow cooked brats, and put it all out with rolls (giant bag from Costco) and chips (giant bag from Costco) and salad – bought a Sentry box of Earthbound Farm lettuce because the Costco boxes are just too big – for the students at the Dinner on Wisconsin tonight.

And, oh, yeah, I also made lazy person’s overnight instant winter tabouli – recipe coming soon. I have the last of it for lunch today with lettuce & dressing & pita.

Bucky with a spoon; Gotta love him

Celeriac & potato mash with watercress salad

Deborah Madison just did a new book, What We Eat When We Eat Alone. The overall conclusion of the book is that when we eat alone, we don’t have to follow the rules – we can eat what and where we want – standing over the sink, in bed, in front of TV, and we don’t have to wait until everyone is seated take a bite. One thing for me that has been changing as I age is that I can wait and eat later now.  I used to get so hungry at 4:00 p.m., that I tended to spoil my dinner appetite with a late afternoon snack, usually sugary – but I’ve gotten better at waiting for something good to cook. The book talks a lot about the differences between men & women eating alone, how men will eat cheeseburgers twice a day, and women are more prone to eating crackers and cheese and wine at cocktail hour and skipping dinner or having a bowl of ice cream or a cup of cocoa. The book points out the exceptions, though, an American man living in England who said his solo meal is cottage cheese on a rice cake with cucumber and tomato – sounds like something my mom would’ve eaten happily.

In some Mollie Katzen book she had an advice for solitary diners section, where she says that cheese is a snack, but melted cheese is a meal.

What We Eat… also points out that women do more cooking for others and so don’t feel like going to a lot of trouble just for themselves. I agree with the woman quoted who said that any meal that takes half a day to prepare should be shared, but I do like slow cooking something just for me – like programming the oven to have rice pudding ready when I get home. I do know I  have been enjoying keeping my kitchen kind of empty recently and cobbling dinner together with whatever I can find – I like the challenge of making something good from random ingredients.  And the sparseness is nice. I also think there’s something about British food that’s comforting – maybe because of the damp climate – they have a lot of foods that seem just right when you come in chilled.

Tuesday I had Brit-inspired, cobbled-together, dinner – mashed celery root (the very last thing from my CSA box, half the knobby root dredged up from the downstairs fridge where it was sitting, lonely in the veg drawer with just an onion to keep it company, wrapped in a plastic bag, and more than half frozen) and potato, with butter and a spoonful of sour cream, with watercress salad on the side. I mixed grainy mustard, rice vinegar, a pinch of sugar, and walnut oil in a bowl then tossed in the washed cress. But maybe it should have been shared, rather than solo – the cress that I didn’t eat wilted and went down the drain; half the celeriac-potato mash is still in a plastic container in the fridge. Hmm, probably be just right, fried up with an egg the next time I come home hungry.