Adventures in Cooking, this Week

I was asked to not be on my cell phone with its bright light glowing in the dark before 4 a.m. this morning. I totally complied. I don't think I was on it until at least 5:30 a.m. I still got the stink-eye, I think. I don't really know, because it was dark...sort of, except for the glow of my cell phone.

The thing is, I have recipes to research! I find stuff on Pinterest and pin it for later. That way I can get a bunch of ideas together, then go back and see what I really want to make. I like researching in the early morning, when its quiet and I have slept a few hours. If I wait until the sun comes up, then I have to put up with people (i.e., the Hubbers) showing me pictures of truck rims and Samurai sword kitchen knife sets and Tardis ornamental string lights...very hard to plan recipes around this stuff. You know I love my husband, but if I could have already finished my recipe research, I could now be giving him and his website gadgets my full attention, instead of blankly nodding and occasionally smiling while I try to reassert my attention onto my blog.

Okay, ready for the adventure part? I am running for my life now!

We get a box of produce delivered every other week from a service called SLO Veg. Basically, they bring the Farmer's Market to us. They put together a box of fresh fruits and vegetables from local growers and deliver it to their customers' doorsteps. They have a website to keep customers informed on what to expect in the box, and also provide recipes featuring that week's produce. I like it because it takes me out of my cooking rut by challenging me to cook things I might not have ever tried before. I have to do a little research sometimes, and that is what I call fun.

So now its time for the refrigerator and pantry review: Right now I have one large pork steak in the frig that would be best used for a quick stir fry for two, or meat in a chili verde stew. Since I still have a pint of my homemade tomatillo salsa, I guess a pork chili verde is in the works, maybe for breakfast.  I also have some bacon, mushrooms and onions that would work perfectly in Pioneer Woman's fancy macaroni and cheese casserole that looked so fantastic on Pinterest. I just bought some elbow mac, and I have cheese on hand, so I am set. I also want to cook those Daikon radish french fries, and I have a ton of oranges to do something with. Hmmm, orange fruit salad, Orange chicken, oranges poached in wine....endless oranges. There is some celery, kale, spinach, carrots, apples, onions, pomegranates, grapes....I already used up the rainbow chard and a few peppers. I still have some asparagus to eat, along with some leftover cauliflower. I think that will either become Buffalo chicken or a cauliflower cream soup.

Fancy mac & cheese, Waldorf salad & BBQ pork ribs

I think I will make that mac and cheese casserole today, when Lee's friend brings our computer home and sets it up for us. We just had to have the operating system reinstalled. Hopefully it will work better now. For the past few months I have been blogging solely on my phone and my tablet. They don't always agree on how to communicate, and I have accidentally bunged up a blog post or two because I didn't "refresh" first when switching back and forth from the tablet to the blog. Photos weren't uploading correctly, either. I don't know if the photo storage had reach a maximum for my blog or what, but I started a new blog today and we'll see how that goes. My followers aren't signed up on my actual blog, anyway, they just read the entries I share on Facebook. Sigh! Someday I will actively pursue getting followers onto my blog page so I can get noticed by some publisher or movie producer and have a movie made of my blogging adventures, like in "Julie and Julia". Someday!