Weekly Gourmet

  Today is Saturday. My friend from grade school had this sign in her dining room that said "There's never enough thyme." What did it mean? It's so gastro-existential. I think of it EVERY time I use thyme. Thyme after time... I hope you have enough thyme to make this breakfast. I hope we all have enough thyme. There really is never enough. It's a hom-o-nym. Just kidding, no it isn't. I have just been trying to add more Dr. Evil into my blog. Regardless of how much thyme you have, you can make one of these two versions of the same breakfast! Like homonyms of eggs. See, we are a house divided. Some of us prefer scrambled, and some of us want to pop the yolk of a delicious, luscious over-easy egg. My preschooler is our swing state, vacillating between the two, and even experimenting with over-medium eggs this week. He is still trying to find himself. So, this morning I made these cute little babies both ways so we could all have our favorites. These are perfec...

Today is Friday. Today I wanted to go a little healthier with my baking. I noticed my good little eaters started down a slippery slope of eating their healthies and then enjoying a treat, and snowballed into sugar-crazed Pavlovian puppies "I'm-done-eating-what's-my-treat?" Salmon, demolished. "Ice cream?" Garbanzo beans gone, "How many Oreos can I have?" "I finished my frozen waffle, do I get candy?" Eat --> Treat. Food --> Dessert. Thank goodness this isn't a parenting blog!   Per my friend's Katie's request, I went with a banana bread recipe. Katie's kids eat really healthily- she's probably going to add spinach to this. Actually, you could probably add 2 cups of chopped spinach and it wouldn't change the flavor much. Tell me if you do that. Anyways, hopefully a wholesome, fruity bread will help take the edge off as I wean them from the hard stuff. This is meant to be a lighter version of banana bread for a...

 Today is Thursday. Taco Thursday. My mom still comes over and folds my laundry for me. And sews things. And she brings me all the groceries she finds on sale. Tonight I got an eggplant and fancy onions. The point is, she is a saint, and she deserves a taco. So don't get any crazy ideas that I normally have dinner parties twice a week on school nights-- it just worked out that way this week. Party yet again tonight. Fiesta actually. For my Mamacita Carmelita and my Poppi Chulo. OK I don't really call him that. But she's my Mamacita, in my phone and everything. "Yo, Mamacita, I need some celery on the cheap." And she's on it. She has ALREADY bought it most weeks. In unrelated news: I got an instant pot for Christmas. Pressure cooker? I still don't understand how to refer to it. Liz is dubious of apparatuses. Apparati? Everyone's onto pressure cookers and air fryers (got one of those for Christmas as well) and I still don't even really know how to us...

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 Monday. The inlaws are coming! The inlaws are coming! Quick, clean the house and the children! Steve, go jump in the shower four minutes before their arrival time!  ...Pulled out all the stops for a lil MLK cele with my inlaws tonight. Meaning we had carbs on a Monday and set the table with knives and everything. I chose tonight's dinner very carefully, as my mother-in-law is quite the picky eater (see my dissertation on picky eaters posted below). She doesn't eat fruit or veggies or seeds or nuts or carbs or bones in chicken or cheese or stinky foods or spice. SO, I used two of the requests I got this week: one for Chicken Piccata and one for recipes with <10 ingredients and came up with this feast we all went to TOWN on. We had Chicken Piccata, lemony orzo, Caesar salads, and chocolate cupcakes 4ways (more on those another day). Nom nom nom...she even ate carbs. And garlic. And anchovies! Don't tell her.                Au...