One of the things I realized when I was up at my mother's, is that I feel a lot better eating home-cooked food (which is less greasy and salty and doesn't have the preservatives that more pre-prepared stuff does). So once I got my kitchen cleaned up, and my dining room, I decided to start looking through cookbooks.
One that I got more recently (it might have been a birthday gift a year or two ago from my brother's family) was the America's Test Kitchen Cooking for One cookbook.
Cooking for one cookbooks are a mixed bag; some of them are too idiosyncratic to the author (I have one whose author really, really liked farro, which I am not sure I have even seen for sale in a grocery here) or they run a little bit to the "sad desk meal" (things you can eat at work).
But like a lot of the ATK cookbooks (at least the ones I've seen), this one is good and solid. I made the chickpeas out of it a while back and those were good (the nice thing about roasted seasoned chickpeas is that they're basically like peanuts, but peanuts you can eat if you have bad teeth and are allergic to peanuts).
This past week, I followed their "juiciest pan-cooked pork chop" instructions (not so much a recipe, just instructions). I got a porkchop out of the "fancy meats" case at Pruett's when I wanted something meaty, but nothing in the pre-wrapped section looked good. (There were nice steaks in the case, too, but at nosebleed prices). The porkchop was only $3, and I got two meals out of it (because I tend to eat largish servings of vegetables along with meat). It was good, and the cooking instructions - you flip it more frequently - were pretty solid and worked up well.
Last night I made the hoisin-glazed meatloaf. The recipe called for ground pork but I got ground beef instead (in retrospect: ground chicken probably would have worked better than the beef, but it's hard for me to get small quantities of that). I wound up doubling the recipe (and then some) because I had just over a pound and the recipe calls for six ounces. It was very good, too - and also a different way of cooking; instead of a whole big loaf you make a roughly 3" by 5" patty and pan fry it well on both sides, and THEN bake it for a short time in the oven (about 15 minutes total oven time, plus the seven or so minutes on the stovetop - so it's a lot faster than conventional meatloaf). I wound up making three, because I had about three times the meat as what was recommended. And it's good left over; one thing I have really learned as a solo cook is to lean into recipes that are good left over.
I also did a little baking. I've had Recipes from the World of Tolkien for a while (Bookshop is now showing it backordered) but I think the baked beans* were the only thing I'd made from it.
Well, I tried the whole wheat/molasses scones. They are surprisingly good - they are all whole wheat flour, and that often makes for heavy baked goods, but in this case, it works (maybe because you use both baking powder and soda, and you add in plain yogurt as well). They were good hot out of the oven with just butter, they're good warmed over with a little honey. They're sweet, but not excessively so, so they work as a dessert-type item or as a breakfast food. (If I can get my hands on some spelt flour - which is kind of between white and whole wheat - I might try that next time, just for fun. But they are good with the whole-wheat flour).
(*I have a couple Hobbit-themed cookbooks and both authors make a little bit of a thing that Tolkien eschewed most New World crops (with the exception, famously, of potatoes, and I guess also tobacco) but the cookbook author of the "from the world of...." cookbook is a bit less strict than the other cookbook I have, hence the beans, which I'm pretty sure are originally New World, and were brought back by the conquistadores. But anyway, beans are a good food - cheap, versatile, fairly nutritious, probably the most environmentally-friendly of the readily-available proteins (and certainly far more appetizing to me than insects, which are often touted as a "green" protein)
I'm not sure what I'll try next. I should pull out my slow cooker - it's supposed to get hot here and slow cookers definitely heat the house less than the oven does. Or plan more stovetop meals that don't take a lot of cooking time. Now that I feel a BIT more comfortable grocery shopping regularly (during the pandemic I was trying to go only once a week or 10 days), I can more decide "oh, I want to try this" and then get whatever ingredients for it I didn't have - like, I didn't have plain yogurt for the scones, or hoisin for the meatloaf.
***
And I once again have a working washer - I was just thinking about going in to campus this morning (so: around 8 or 8:30) and I got a call from the repair guy - the hose came in late in the day Friday, and if I had time, he'd come over and replace it. So he did.
Heh, it wasn't smooth once he got it fixed up - after he left, I decided to wash up a big piece of backing fabric I pulled out for a quilt top I think I want to take in for longarming. And so I plugged the set up back in, set the right load size and water temperature, and pulled out the knob to start.
Nothing.
I started at the washer in dismay - could the guy have thrown a breaker? is there a reset button I don't know about? So I called the guy (it went to voicemail) and left a message, and despaired of being able to use my washer again right away.
Sat down at my computer to hope he'd call back.
And then I remembered: oh wait, didn't you turn off the water intakes back when you thought you'd try fixing it yourself? So I went and turned them back on, pulled the knob back out....
and the washer started filling, just fine. So I called the guy back - got him this time - and told him to disregard my message.
Also, the dryer was clanking and I worried something was wrong with THAT (that it was unbalanced or something was loose between the drum and the housing) but then I realized that the little pull-out bar on the top (this is a dryer mounted on top of the washer, and it has a bar you can pull out to hang things on; I hang my brassieres on it to dry some times) had gotten pushed in, and it's a little broken and loose, and it was bumping against the drum. So I pulled it out all the way and then THAT was fine.
Still waiting on the roofer to call and schedule a time for an estimate; still trying to find a good siding person. Tomorrow I have to take my car out for a recall repair so I'm just going to have them drop me on campus and I"m going to work on my manuscript instead of trying to do anything here at the house.
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