Cooking at Home

Ever since the pandemic came around we rarely go to restaurants. We used to go out for lunch at least once a week and usually out for dinner on Sunday evenings. Now we cook at home almost all of the time, but do still order pickup at fewer and fewer restaurants. It seems like our own cooking just tastes better. There are two Greek and one Persian place that we like the most. So we now have a few recipes that we really like and rotate them around. One of them is a green pepper bake, another is a shrimp casserole. Then there is my mom’s Polish chicken soup and another cabbage soup. And of course my husband, who does most of the cooking, makes wonderful and tasty fish, chicken, and other tomato based soups. Every once in a while the food looks so good I have been taking photos of it. And every once in a while I post a food item on the weekly photo challenge that I belong to - although the last one was of an already made deli sandwich that we got in the grocery store. Like everyone else it’s hard to figure out what to make every day for dinner and we love leftovers! We always pretty much have the same thing for lunch - eggs, bread and fruit. But diner is another story. So I’m always on the look out for easy recipes. And I love casseroles. This week it’s time to rotate the shrimp dish. We just need to get the ingredients. The question is whether to get fresh or frozen shrimp? 

Two Microwaves

I’m sure everyone has heard of a double oven, or having two ovens. When we renovated our kitchen in our Midwest home we had two ovens. What I liked most about that was not having to bend over to access the space snd the food  - which is getting more and more difficult. It also seemed a lot safer. We rarely used the second oven anyway. On a Capitol Hill we had two 500 square foot units and each one had an oven. That came in handy about once a year. When we first moved in to our northern Virginia condo our new under counter drawer model microwave just didn’t work. Who can live without a microwave? So we went to Target and picked up a cheap unit to hold us over because the repair person wasn’t showing up immediately. It’s been over two years now and I’m not sure we would ever go without two microwaves. We use them more than the oven. For dinner it is really convenient to have two things cooking at one time - especially when there is a baked potato involved. If we had known we would be using two microwaves all of the time we probably would have paid more attention to the appliance we selected. Recently my husband punched a hole in the floor of the smaller countertop unit, but I don’t think it affected anything. I suppose only time will tell. So now we have one oven that is hard to get at and two microwaves. And we didn’t even plan it that way. 

Happy Thanksgiving

When we had the space to entertain in Milwaukee, we didn't have a lot of visitors on major holidays. Who wants to travel to Wisconsin in the winter? But here in Washington, we have family members and we oftentimes have Thanksgiving in our tiny place. Thank goodness we an get extra plates and forks just eight houses down where our grandson lives. They are off to other places so we can raid their house. So my husband was up early starting with the eggplant dish...this year we decided to have a little bit of a lot of things rather than a big turkey. So we created a big enough table hopefully to get everyone at least to the edge. I snipped a couple mums from the garden. And now we are relaxing until the next big wave of activity starts.  Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving regardless of the space or the place.