#434

This week in from-scratch-cooking:

Gosh, I love being home with all of my cooking ingredients and tools. I made a conscious effort this week to cook, and for approximately $6 a day, I have made (with lots of repeats):

*Coffee (duh...always need coffee, but now I have a programmable machine. Brilliance)

*French vanilla yogurt with mango and raspberry granola (Okay, most of that is not from scratch, but I did cut up the mango.)

*Cucumber water

*Mujadara (lentils and rice) with carmelized onions (one of my all-time favorite Middle Eastern dishes. I lived off of mujadara sandwiches from a place down the block from my apartment in NYC years ago. The onions are the best part. I used the recipe from How to Cook Everything, but found that I had to up the cooking time and double the amount of cumin.)

*Asian chicken salad (yes, I keep white miso in my fridge, rice vinegar, mirin, and sesame oil. It's hard to get good Asian in Upstate New York, so I'm learning to cook it myself. Although, I'm not sure a Williams-Sonoma recipe truly counts.)

*Hot fudge sauce from The Silver Palate using the Smitten Kitchen variation. Heather and Aukai threw a brownie sundae party last night, and I honestly ate the best brownie sundae I have ever had in my life. And that was without whipped cream. Heather, if you're reading this, can Aukai make me brownies every week? Thanks much.

*And the piece-de-resistance? Tomato sauce with onion and butter from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking via Smitten Kitchen. This was one of those dishes that I was skeptical of, especially because of the 5 Tbs of butter. Then I realized that I put a ton of butter in my jarred tomato sauce anyway (just ask Tom). And I added a teensy bit of sugar and gave it a blitz in the blender. The sauce on its own was sort of, meh. But spoon it over hot fettuccine? Whoa. That's one good sauce. I think an angel sang.

PS. Anyone wanna buy me this for Valentine's Day?