WIAW 147 – A New Year!
Happy New Year to you all!
Here is What I Ate Wednesday… OK, it’s Thursday, it’s been a multi-migraine a day sort of week, so… I’m glad I’m walking and talking. (The weather is supposed to settle down… sometime…)
And actually, some of my time and attention has been going into analysis and planning… what are people reading, what do you all want to read, what sorts of posts fill a need for you all, how shall Inhabited Kitchen move forward? There will be a few changes over the next months, but I think they are all growing organically from where we are now, so that I can continue to give people good, easy recipes for delicious home cooked meals.
But meanwhile…
For breakfast, I had ham and eggs – with the last batch of Gingerbread Muffins, made with the last of the Gingerbread Spice Blend. (I still have some of the Apple Spice Blend – I’ll have to use it in my muffins now! I’ve become a total fan of grabbing a jar and adding flavor, especially first thing in the morning…)
Lunch was soup. Lentils and a rutabaga and a few other root vegetables losing their crispness in the crisper. And… well, before this surge of migraines, I returned to a project I had somehow dropped a year ago – gluten free, whole grain bread.
See, I had baked bread since I was a kid. I baked a loaf of bread every week in a dorm because the local stores only sold what my mother derisively called marshmallow bread. I have never liked fluffy bread. For years, I baked a delicious, light but not fluffy, 100% whole wheat bread. But gluten free bakers, battling the real issue of gluten free bricks, err (in my opinion at least) on the other side, and all the gluten free bread I’ve had seems to me to be downright mushy. So I had some ideas, and was getting somewhere, but it wasn’t quite right, and I put it on the shelf. And now, I’m returning to it with new ideas. (And a glance at that bread will tell you that I’m Not There Yet.. Someday…)
One part of the Planning for the Future is that I’m kicking around ideas for how to handle recipes like this. My Target Audience – people looking for fast easy meals that do not involve takeout or packaged food – mostly isn’t interested in bread baking. (Though there is some overlap – people who enjoy cooking on a day off, but need very fast meals on a work night. Or who, like me, just have not found anything they like.) I’m still going to work on recipes like this, or the gingerbread, just because I want to eat them – but I’m trying to decide how best to share them with those who want them, without intimidating those just learning to cook from scratch. And I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Anyway…. back to the meals…
The really annoying thing about the current migraine pattern is that I keep getting one just as I start to cook dinner. I must say, that has focused my mind on easy meals that either I can make even in a mild migraine, or that Rich can cook with little or no direction! So this was one of them – as simple as you could get, really… There was still a slice or two of ham that I wanted to finish anyway. Cut it up, heat it and brown it lightly. Toss in 2 cups of cooked brown rice, and a little water, stir. When that’s hot, throw in frozen peas. (We are coming into the commercially frozen vegetable season in Inhabited Kitchen, as well as using the very last from the CSA.) When they’re hot, call it dinner…
And here, the barometric pressure is gradually rising, there’s even some sun out there, hopefully I’m coming into a better week…
And my hope for all of you is that 2017 be a wonderful year, and that you be happy, healthy, and prosperous!