Return of the Blogi

I've come to the conclusion that there is one single factor common to every dish I would identify (and relish) as "mom food", and that is that at least one major aspect of it is baked. Pot pies, regular pies, divans, chicken Parmesan, home made turkey soup (with roasted turkey and home made bread), inside-out ravioli, potatoes in almost any form.... all baked. The benefit to baking a meal as opposed to cooking something on the stove top is of course that it's by nature less hands-on and in addition you can make a whole lot more. So when cooking for a family, baking just makes sense. Maybe for this reason I rarely bake: I don't need large quantities of food at once just for myself, and living in a dorm, the oven is shared between 60+ people and I don't like to worry about someone messing with a long-baking item. In addition, baking has this stigma to me of being more fussy than stove top cooking, needing more precise measurements and effort than I ever really have the patience for. And yet, tonight I have prepared myself baked hot stuffed zucchini with pepper "fries" and paprika yogurt dipping sauce:

This is one small zucchini split in half lengthwise and hollowed like a boat. The removed zucchini flesh was cooked in a pan with de-cased linguiça (mild Portuguese sausage), some onion, garlic, red pepper flakes, sriracha, and chunky salsa until most of the liquid was gone from the mixture. I stuffed it into the hollowed out zukes, sprinkled with just a little grated Muenster cheese, then a generous sprinkling of breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs are definitely homey. My mom always asks if I need more if she's coming my way with stuff from home, but I always have to admit that I still have essentially a full tube. Meatballs, divan, and fish are best with plenty of bread crumbs, but I tend not to make them, so I rarely have the chance to 'crumb anything. Well, here I did!

The dipping sauce is just plain yogurt with a little olive oil and paprika swirled in. Of course if you have sour cream around that would be perfect, but I've got yogurt so there it is. My stuffing was really spicy-hot, so I'm glad for my dip! If you don't go as spicy, the creaminess of the yogurt (or sour cream) is a nice contrast to the very light-tasting zucchini anyhow. The pepper "fries" just came along for the ride.

If you want to know why I haven't posted much lately, aside from not feeling well, my meals have also been pretty ugly:

 

This is a fat pile of veggies and linguiça in a garlicky sauce over brown rice. Among the veg in this meal is carrot, onion, red pepper, green pepper, and the crowning jewel-- eggplant. I really love eggplant cooked until pretty mushy in a rich sauce. It looks gross, but it's great both hot and cold, over rice or noodles or toast(!)... and the leftovers from this have been a bunch of quick lunches for me lately. 

On an unrelated note, I've discovered the best product to use on my face is also the best thing to use to clean tarnished silver:

 

 

Eight parts baking soda, one part ground cinnamon, and just enough water to form a paste. The baking soda/water bath product business is just your generic hippie recipe (it can be used on hair as well, but it worked pretty poorly for me), but the cinnamon is my addition. Being a salt, the baking soda is great for gently scrubbing any oiliness from one's face without over-drying the skin. Cinnamon is an astringent, which also helps to reduce pores and provide a pleasant heat that makes the mixture feel like it's working. Also, it makes me smell nice, and I can't argue with that.

One last note-- I'm a big fan of whole-grain white wheat. Apparently it's sort of like albino regular wheat, which explains its color. The part of regular wheat that makes whole-wheat products taste somewhat bitter in comparison to white flour are absent in white wheat, so it's really nice if you want to try to eat more whole grains but don't like the flavor so much. Or, like me, notice that 5 pounds of wgww is the same price of 1 pound of regular whole wheat.