Weekly Gourmet

Today is Monday. Ahhhh the boneless, skinless chicken breast - nature's blank canvas. It would be my most dreaded ingredient were I ever to appear on "Chopped." There are just too many ways to go with it. I chose tonight's recipe based on two features: 1) It calls for pineapple, and I happened to have a pineapple on hand that was about a day away from getting tossed and 2) It calls for cardamom and I have a cutie-mom who buys cardamom pods and grinds them up and delivers them to me in tiny, adorable jars. Notes: A) Steve hates fruit mixed with meat, but see item #1. B) My kids THINK they don't like pineapple, but I know better, and please refer back to item #1. C) They always groan over pineapple on "Chopped" and talk about how it is the one food that ruins any dish when introduced. Did that stop me? Nuh uh. See. I set up everyone to hate their dinner like the evil non-food wasting person that I am, and everyone LOVED it. FYI, the pineapple was surprisin...

Today is Tuesday. While we were renovating our house, we lived with my in-laws for seven (7) months. I LIVED WITH MY MOTHER-IN-LAW for seven incredibly short, easy breezy, fun-filled months. No I'm just kidding. Honestly it was fine and I recommend to anyone that if you and your in-laws...don't...always recognize each other's finer points, go move into their home for an extended period of time. Now I am their favorite child AND I am able to freely yell at, argue with, and lovingly make fun of my mother-in-law like she's my own mom. Lots of exaggerated eye rolling. It's swell. And I even got her to start keeping her butter out on the counter! See, she listens to me. Good Rose.  My one condition for moving into someone else's house was that I had to be in charge of the kitchen. You should have seen me lugging over bins of pans and spices and utensils that I thought I couldn't live without (and it was only supposed to be for eight weeks!), it was hilarious...li...

Today is Thursday. Things got a little experimental around here tonight. I wanted to make seafood but haven't been to my local fishmonger (Costco) in a bit so I only had canned tuna to play with. "Hmm I can come up with something a little better than tuna melts," I thought to myself. I made an Italian tuna salad with cannellini beans and whole roasted cauliflowers. I never thought tuna AND beans AND green things (parsley) would go over with the kids so I let us have it on some lovely sourdough bread I baked today. Yes, yes, carbs on a Thursday. It happens. Picture me doing all this while four little girls giggled and shrieked from upstairs and occasionally filtered downstairs- sometimes wet, sometimes with blue hands, always looking guilty- as I happily sang and played chef in the kitchen... joke was on me! Liz's Italian Tuna Salad Serves 6 Ingredients 1 can cannellini beans (white kidney beans), rinsed and drained 2 T. olive oil 2 T. mayonnaise 1 clove g...