Things To Do

Sometimes I feel like I don't have enough to do. But today was one of those days when I did all the little things I should be doing, and of course, I proved to myself that I have plenty to keep me busy.

My day:

yoga
breakfast
shower
trip to co-op
prepare chicken in marinade for dinner
lunch
clean the dishes
start laundry
trip into town to get a new library book, and buy light bulbs, yarn, and a watch
take down yesterday's dry laundry and hang up wet laundry
practice guitar
write in blog

And here we are. Time to cook dinner and relax.

Pasta Sauce

I like to make my own pasta sauce by cooking down cherry tomatoes. It is good, but a little bitter. Over Christmas I asked my dad how he makes his sauce. He recommended adding tomato paste to thicken it and sugar to cut the bitterness.

I decided to work on my sauce tonight. I tried adding some more vegetables. That was good. I wanted to try the tomato paste, but the co-op didn't have any. And I don't tend to have sugar in the house because I don't use it for anything. But, I do have honey because I put honey in tea.

Honey in pasta sauce makes it not at all bitter and kind of delicious!

In Case You Were Wondering

Sometimes I make cooking experiments so that no one else has to.

Falafel is not a good covering for chicken. If you buy some, you should probably make it into balls like the box suggests.

John Can Cook!

One night, a week or two ago, while I was cooking dinner, John was being very bossy. I can't remember what about, but he was trying to tell me how to prepare part of the meal and I felt like I already knew how to do it. My solution to said bossiness was to tell him that he would be cooking dinner the next night.

I have known John to not put a lot of effort into every day meals. He likes making nice meals for dinner parties, but on an average weeknight he is likely to eat pesto pasta (something I got tired of eating shortly after we started dating). I was pretty sure my plan of rewarding his bossiness with cooking duty was going to backfire on me and I would end up eating something I didn't really want to.

But John surprised me by getting stir fry ingredients from the co-op. We did have to take a taxi to Asda that night to buy a wok since the stir fry would not fit in any of our pans. But we finally had delicious food. Since then we have gotten a lot of use out of the wok and John's stir fry just gets fancier. He has learned how to make fried rice and lightly breaded chicken!

Now we share cooking duties. But John is still bossy. Especially when he is cooking. If I am anywhere near the kitchen I get put to work chopping peppers or tossing things into the wok. Ending up with a good meal makes it kind of hard to complain though.