The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

We are finally back in our apartment after a month in boxes and I couldn’t be more happy. There’s still a lot of unpacking to do but we should be back to normal this weekend, which means that I will be posting more regularly again in the very near future.

Anyway, I made zucchini sticks! The healthy kind. And they rocked!

These little babies are a quick fix when there’s nothing much left in the kitchen. It’s also a recipe I find myself making quite often. For some reason it’s invariably the zucchini’s that are left in my fridge at the end of the week. I suppose  this is because historically I’ve never really been a huge zucchini fan. There’s something about cooked zucchini that’s never appealed to me and I can identify a few traumatic situations involving ratatouille as a child, or should I say extremely overcooked zucchini mush.

(Don’t worry Mom, I’m not referring to any meal you prepared. I promise.)

I guess that’s what turned me off, this is not a vegetable that lends itself well to long cooking times. I know people, there are a few exceptions to this and I assure you I’m just as much a fan of zucchini bread and other cake like zucchini applications. Obviously. I just find that for the most part, I prefer zucchini raw or just slightly cooked.

I wasn’t planning on doing another squash recipe post for a while. I don’t want to seem like I’m squash obsessed, or lacking any original recipe ideas. In the 5 or so months that this blog has been up, I’ve made roasted butternut squash risotto, a butternut squash loaf, roasted acorn squash and now this whole roasted acorn squash. I guess that’s not too bad right? It doesn’t even average out as once per month, which if compared to the amount of squash that we have actually consumed during this period is quite controlled.

Simplicity is everything for me right now. Over the past couple weeks I’ve been in the process of cleaning out our over cluttered apartment in preparation for the month long separation from our beloved home during the winter Olympics. As of Sunday we’ve managed to clean out almost everything in the bathroom, closet, bedroom and living room and as of this weekend we will finally be forced to do the same to our kitchen. Sigh.

I knew when it came down to it it would be challenge, but I suspect the magnitude of the challenge will be greater than I initially thought. Over the  last 3 years I’ve managed to develop an extensive collection of spices, condiments, flours, grains, dried goods of all shapes and sizes not to mention every gadget under the sun and I’m absolutely in love with every single piece of it, even the extremely unnecessary and underused – garlic peeler I’m looking at you. I think this might have something to do with being a pack rat, or at least that’s what my husband would say, I’m more comfortable with the term collector to be quite honest.

Happy New Year Everyone!

There is probably no need to say it, but to avoid any confusion and to provide myself with a reminder should I forget, maybe  I will anyway: I’ve made some New Years resolutions. Now, don’t get all excited thinking you know exactly what I’m about to say because these resolutions have nothing to do with dieting or eating healthier. I already eat healthy and have done so for most of my life and dieting is just something that I will never do. Nope, this years food related resolution is all about tomatoes.

This dal recipe comes from my mother-in-law and is as close to perfect as I’ve ever come with making Indian food at home. For me, Indian food is one of those things that is generally always better in restaurants, for some reason despite how closely I follow a recipe it never turns out quite right in the end. While many Indian recipes seem to be fairly straight forward, I was always suspicious that there was a secret ingredient I didn’t know about that was present in Indian cooking, which was preventing me from being able to enjoy making a recipe at home that would not disappoint.