Christmas Goodies

I just wanted to let you know that I'm not dead. I've just been away, and am going away soon. Consequently, the meals I've had to cook over the last several weeks have primarily involved making do with whatever is on hand. Apart from that lovely cabbage from last week, I haven't exactly been making anything I'd wish to share with the world.

Today is case in point. I'm making a classic cheese lasagna. I've actually never made one before - I've only made two lasagnas in my life and both were the roasted vegetable kind from an earlier post. Today's version is not likely to be so spectacular, but it has already served its purpose in that I have used up a number of random food items left over in my refrigerator. I chose lasagna because I had most of a container of ricotta cheese languishing away. I added to that a tiny fragment of cream cheese and a slightly larger fragment of goat cheese. I also used up a jar of tomato sauce and half a bag of shredded mozzarella. Not to mention the leftover lasagna noodles (although I fell just short of using up the whole package). While I love trying new recipes that result in remarkably tasty meals, I also enjoy seeing that the leftover ingredients from those meals don't go to waste. That's what today's dinner is all about.

I also wanted to show off my Christmas goodies and hint at some of the delicious things I have in store for this blog sometime soon. I now have a full-sized food processor, which I believe to be the greatest tool that ever entered my kitchen. I asked for it because I thought it might be useful. When I watched the instructional dvd (yes, a dvd!), I realized that it will be indispensible. I look forward to never having to pick up a cheese grater again. Additionally, I have gained a Dutch oven. I've been wanting one for awhile now. When I walked into Home Goods a few days before Christmas and saw this gorgeous orange one, I jumped at it, despite having one on my Christmas list. Fortunately, no one got me that boring grey model so I get to keep the pretty one. There are also a cookbook, a number of new tart pans, some biscuit cutters and a quesadilla maker.

Finally, there's the book that I'm most excited about reading: The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. My course reader contained an excerpt from this book - on factory farming - that I assigned last semester. Reading it certainly changed the way I thought about my food, although it has not necessarily changed all of my habits just yet. I felt that reading the whole book might give me even greater inisght into the impact of what I eat and how to make the best possible choices about food. So far, it has done just that, and I'm currently contemplating how to implement what I've learned. While it is, I'm sure, already falling a bit out of date (published in 2006), I think it's a worthwhile read for anyone who is interested in learning more about the ethical implications of the food we eat. If it has done nothing else, it has gotten me to significantly reduce the amount of meat in my menu for the upcoming weeks - something I'd wanted to do for some time with limited success.

So stay tuned for more regular blogging action next week, with some new tasty recipes and far more vegetables than I was able to rustle up in December.