Green Juice Love and An Eclectic Supper

“Gratitudes” – September 20, 2013

Today I’m grateful for:

1. The adrenaline rush that comes with a new job offer
2. Starting the day off with green juice
   
3. How the fall always makes me want to light candles and get cozy with a movie
4. My fall apron
5. Extra dish soap
6. That the grocery store opens early in the morning
7. A new bag of food for Jasper cat
8. Cooler nights for sleeping
9. Extra blankets
10. Seeing Guinness glasses at the Goodwill (my favourite kind of water glass)
11. Being able to sprout with a mason jar and a window sill
12. The first page of a new journal
13. Fall gourds 
    
14. Cucumbers on sale (I really, really, love cucumber)
15. The smell of cauliflower roasting in the oven
16. Starting a list of soups that I want to make this Fall/Winter
17. That I can learn how to twist my hair into up-do’s from the internet
18. Bobby pins
19. Beautiful red swiss chard
20. Internet cafes with a printer
21. The big, bright, beautiful, full moon last night
22. The harvest baskets at the grocery store
23. Salted peanuts
    

    

    (Salted peanuts in a retro peanut bowl from my childhood)

24. New blooms on the houseplants
25. Recipe cards
26. Finding a “Christmas Cook” hat
27. Learning that stepping outside my comfort zone won’t be comfortable, and that’s okay
28. Green lentils
29. Rediscovering an old favourite recipe
30. An eclectic supper

I love food that inspires me when I'm in the kitchen. I was only planning on frying some leftover basmati rice with onion and cooking some green lentils. Quick. Easy. So, I started chopping an onion. Then out of nowhere my brain thought "lemon rice would be really easy to throw together right now." I didn't want to hunt down a cookbook though, so I just went with it and tried to remember what I'd used in the past. There was something really freeing about just using ingredients that felt right instead of trying to read a cookbook that is half-balanced under a large jar of sundried tomatoes that's trying (almost successfully) to keep it open to the right page. Sure, it was by no means an authentic lemon rice but the flavour hit the spot.

The lentils had halfway cooked when my mind piped up again, "tamarind lentils would go really nicely with lemon rice. You have all of the ingredients. Who cares that the lentils are half-cooked already?" I sometimes forget about the ingredients that I have in the cupboard because I'm too busy making lists of ingredients that I need for new recipes. I was already in the kitchen so I decided to roast a block of tofu that was in the fridge. Then since the oven was already hot I roasted half a cauliflower that was also hoping to be used up somehow. I found a kitchen groove and it felt good. Lessons learned: 1) cook with what you have and trust your intuition, 2) if you're already cooking and the oven is hot see what extras you can make at the same time, it means less cooking the next day, 3) cooking can be an act of self care -- nurturing the creative and nourishing the physical.

Clockwise from top right: Tamarind Lentils (Veganomicon, p123), tomato, sauteed red swiss chard, lemon wedge, roasted cauliflower, roasted tofu, lemon rice, avocado. Eclectic and tasty!