Tamagoyaki Taco

This was my first attempt at making tamagoyaki. I think I added too much egg to the pan at first, so it came out a bit ragged. I put it into a flour tortilla and topped it with some hoisin sauce and some sriracha sauce.

(someday, I will learn to spell and pronounce this consistently and correctly)

Roasted Cauliflower

We're invited to our friend's home for Saturday night dinner today, so we're bringing a vegetable side dish that I made -- roasted cauliflower in a vinaigrette with raisins and parsley.

I love grilled corn muffins

It's Always About the Food

I look back on my blog entries and they're largely about food. Tonight is not that much different. I'm thawing out one of the eight frozen cartons of beef meatballs I made using a Lidia Bastianich recipe. The pasta is a frozen batch of fresh spaghetti from Papa Petrone's Take 'n' Bake. Eat and sleep. Eat and sleep. And watch "Downton Abbey."

Curried Tofu

Meatless Monday

Tomorrow, for Valentine's Day, I've ordered a heart-shaped pizza for lovers from Papa Petrone's Take 'n' Bake -- pepperoni and sundried tomatoes on top. Papa makes it up, then we take it home and cook it here.

But, today, we're doing a Meatless Monday. I'm making curried tofu over basmati rice and we'll have a garden salad on the side. The rice already is in the rice cooker, timed for 6:00 p.m. When my wife gets home, I'll cut up the tofu and the onion, then sautee the onion in some peanut oil. When the onion has browned, I'll toast the curry powder in the pan, then pour in the unsweetened coconut milk, followed by the tofu and some soy sauce. I'd normally add a pinch of cayenne, but my wife prefers less heat in her curry. Very simple.

We'll watch "Downton Abbey" over dinner. We watched the first five episodes over the past weekend, and want to get into the second season this week.

Eating at Home

I was out of town for about three weeks. My elderly father had a coronary bypass (three arteries) and a pacemaker. I'm back home for awhile now. My folks don't like cooking and I was there with just my Mom for two weeks, and my wife also for another week. It was a lot of eating out and getting takeouts.

Now that I am home, I'm determined to cook at least four nights in a row. Monday, I thawed out (hey, I had cooked it) some of Lydia Bastianich's recipe for meatballs in sauce, but served them over jasmine rice, with steamed zucchini and yellow summer squash on the side.

Tonight, I'm making Mark Bittman's recipe for "boiled water" from his "How To Cook Everything" iPad app. I used the variation that uses roasted garlic and I added tomatoes. I didn't have canned chopped tomatoes in the cupboard, so I used canned crushed tomatoes. There was leftover sliced squash from last night, so I tossed it in. We'll round out the meal with a half a sliced cold cut sandwich each.

Wednesday night will be simple, too. I love eating home. It'll be just pan-grilled hot dogs with baked beans.

Thursday, I'll either roast a chicken or bring in a rotisserie chicken. The dark meat leftovers and carcass will go in the slow cooker on Friday with carrots and onions to make a stock that I'll freeze.