Weekly Gourmet

Today is Tuesday. As much as I LOVE to cook, I conversely HATE wasting food. I mean I have anchovies in my freezer. I compost. That being said, leftovers were piling up around here like laundry, so Mama took the night off. But what kind of professional, famous blogger would I be if I just left all my little bloglings hanging? So, tonight I decided to get my creative juices and my broiler (and my smoke alarm) going and whip up an original salsa for this week's upcoming taco night. (We don't confine our tacos to any specific night of the week around here.) Lately I have had this recurring fantasy/idea for somebody to make and serve me my usual spicy margarita, but with something sweet in it as well, something like a strawberry. And THEN I wondered to myself...what if my salsa had both jalapeños and strawberries? What would happen then? What if... what if... there were strawberries INSTEAD of tomatoes?! I mean they are both red, right? Plus sometimes I take issue with non-August/S...

 Today is Sunday. Meatless January, anyone? I try to do a vegetarian night once a week or so. OK actually, I forget to take something out of the freezer at least once every five days, so poof- weekly vegetarian meal. With added bonus of annoying Steve. He inevitably looks at each veggie meal with a raised eyebrow and says, "You know what would be good with this? Some chunks of chicken." Well, today was his lucky day because we were having Sunday dinner at my parents' house, and my mom was making a meat-centric feast of penne with meatballs, Italian sausage AND lamb neck bones. And my mom almost never eats meat! All that work and she doesn't even taste a ball of meat! So I thought I would be a dear and make her a new dish I had been wanting to try: eggplant meatballs. Sounds good, right? Why not make a ball out of the world's best emoji? My dad said, "What are these things? Brussels sprouts?" Sigh. Reprinted with permission from Food Network Kitchen .  Eg...

  Today is Wednesday. It's freezing cold today. I really wanted something homey to warm us all up so I decided on an old staple: split pea soup. Very old- this is my grandma's recipe! My grandma was a simple cook. This is just a simple soup, only to be jazzed up after Easter, when one has a ham bone on hand. Adding the ham bone is so good that I used to fight my (elderly, feeble) great-aunts for it. My mom would have to split it so we could each have some for our split pea soup the following week. Oh Italian women. Don't ask me about the gizzards on Thanksgiving. Simple, meatless meals like this are what my first-generation Grandma from Sicily had to offer.   Grandma B's Split Pea Soup Ingredients  1 bag dried peas 8 cups water, chicken stock, vegetable stock, or a combo thereof  1 tsp. salt, more or less I say more. I doubled. Note on salt below. 1 T. olive oil 1 cup diced carrots, more or less I used 2 big ones. ¼ cup finely chopped onion, more or less I used half ...