Inspired, uninspired...

[thanate]

Inspired: (by kittymaru's return to her piano) I got out my violin yesterday and played it briefly. The A string is in pretty desperate need of replacement (it is very sour) and my fingers are slow and clumsy, let alone my brain in the reading of music, but I shall attempt to perservere. (er, I have no idea how to spell that?)

Also, the magic of the internet has led me to gaze upon the wonder of Northanger Abbey socks. They have gargoyles!

Uninspired: I go through phases where I quite like one sort or another of food, and enjoy the whole cooking dinner thing and find food interesting. And then I'll go through the opposite phase, where every meal I can think of feels like "I just did that" and nothing is quite inspiring. Yesterday, I did a slightly more minimalist reprise of yellow soup, which grauwulf admitted to thinking excellent last time (see comment below link...) and this time it got a sigh from him and a "Some day, I'd like to have something normal for dinner."

Of course, I think one dish things made out of whatever's in the kitchen that tastes good combined are normal. He thinks boxed meals or pork chops and potatoes baked with olive oil are normal. We can meet in the middle on spaghetti, but there's only so much spaghetti one can eat... So I'm curious: What is "normal" food in your household?

Comments

[garden-goth.livejournal.com]

Honestly, normal for me depends on the season, what's on sale, and how lazy I am.

Right now, normal is anything from shrimp balls with rice noodles, bok choy and bean sprouts in pho broth to chicken leg quarters in some kind of sauce with squash and rice. It's also included turkey chili, yellow chicken curry, and others.

One thing that I've tried to instill as 'normal' is the "one new recipe per fortnight."

So, moral of the story: 'normal' rotates depending on mood.

[fishy1.livejournal.com]

if we're feeling lazy, frozen dumplings or udon or unagi-don.
otherwise lately we've been doing steak with random veggies, ethiopian one-pot stew, various soups, grilled cheese, stir fry of various, veal marsala, and i think that's as far back and my memory goes.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

What goes into Ethiopian one-pot stew?

I think part of my problem is that in my head things like steak are restaurant food, and I haven't yet had a pork chop cooked so I liked it. :/ Perhaps I should grill some cheese.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of a time guideline for trying new recipes; I tend to do these things kind of sporadically.

It probably doesn't help that my new recipes lately have mostly been bread, so I still have to come up with things to go with them.

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

It's not the same thing as a pork chop which I don't much like, but pork tenderloin is obscenely easy to cook and can be tasty. I use it as a variation on my basic "look I'm cooking" meal of meat+veggies+rice. I variously prepare these mixed or separate (meat + veggies/rice, meat/veggies/rice, meat/veggies + (rice or biscuits). Other "normal food" is grilled cheese or grilled turkey&cheese, salad with chicken on top, and pseudo-omelettes (scrambled eggs with stuff in them). Tim will eat some of these. I need to figure out better and more interesting vegetable dishes.

[garden-goth.livejournal.com]

I like the new recipe thing, although if I were playing around with breads, I'd probably accompany them with soup/stew/chili standbyes or find a new recipe for an old favorite (sometimes that's all I do, then I combine what I like from the two in subsequent batches). The new recipe also forces me to look through my cookbooks and actually get use out of them.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

The new recipe also forces me to look through my cookbooks and actually get use out of them.

Well, there is that; I have a whole row of thrift store cookbooks, most of which I've opened about once.

Perhaps it's time for more chili; I shall have to put green peppers on the shopping list.