9 February 2009 A little light food blogging
One of the benefits of the slow economy is that I get to spend more time cooking great food. Today was the first day in a week and a half that Genbo went to daycare, finally flu-free. I used it by luxuriating in a child-free, quiet house, with just the McNeil Lehrer Newshour to keep me company while I cooked. The entire week’s worth I haven’t been able to watch until today, in fact. It was glorious.
This loaf of bread is a variation on the no-knead bread that has been making the rounds on the internets after being introduced in the NYT last year. This version is about one-third whole-wheat with some dried cranberries to make it appetizing for the kiddies. I’ve been experimenting with ways to make the recipe even easier, and today I found out that if you let the dough rise in the same cast-iron pot you’re going to cook it in, then cook it without removing it first and washing the pot, the entire circumference of the loaf will stick like glue to the pot. Hence the jagged edges all the way around. That was OK, though, since I got to peel the stuck crust away from the cast iron and gnosh on it while I prepared the below.
I used to be intimidated by the idea of making lasagna, until I realized that it’s just red pasta sauce layered with flat noodles and cheese. And, since I consider making pasta sauce by anything less than the gallon a waste of energy, I usually have some left over for lasagna. Genbo requested lasagna today when I asked him what he wanted, and I was perfectly happy to whip up a batch of sauce for it.
This also, of course, helped him get out the door in the morning with no tears. He does enjoy daycare, but he’s prone to forget this fact if he hasn’t been in a while. Today I was able to avoid tears by promising him lasagna and mentioning the fact that if he complained every time I let him stay home for an extended period, I would be less likely to do so in the future (the last couple days he was home, he really could have gone). Maybe I should have taken pictures of carrots and sticks instead.