cooking marathon returns!

I went back through my old posts with the intention of organizing my past recipes a bit better.

I did make some headway on that, although some of those recipes need to stay in the archives. A few are just embarrassing. :)

Anyway, I had forgotten that I used to do these cooking marathon posts. The thing is, I don't do all that many cooking marathons anymore. I still cook in bulk a lot of the time, though, and I will often make two or three things in a day, but rarely will I devote the entire day to cooking.

I've made quite a lot of food over the last two days, however, so I will share that with you. Cooking marathon returns!

Yesterday it was still hot, although not quite hot enough to keep the apartment shut tight, thank goodness. Air quality has been an issue, due to the Station Fire here in SoCal. We kept the windows open while I cooked a whole butternut squash in the oven. If you've never cooked squash this way, I highly recommend it. My hands aren't a fan of cutting up anything as hard as that, so it's very nice to just set it in a small glass pan, prick it with a fork, and leave it for about 90 minutes at 400.

At the same time, I made some hard boiled eggs. When they were done, I rinsed out the pan and then used it to start a large batch of SCD ketchup. You just reduce Campbell's tomato juice to the thickness you'd like. I posted about how to make ketchup here, and that's one of the posts I wish would be lost to the sands of time. I now simmer it in a very large pan with a mesh screen on top and I leave it alone. I bought the screen for $2 at Ikea. So now I don't have to watch it at all anymore!

Later in the evening, I pulled together what was left in the produce drawer and made a vaguely Mexican skillet meal. I really can't share the recipe, because I haven't truly yet succeeded in making anything taste really Mexican. I used some nice lean ground beef and chopped up some green onions, tomatoes, and jalapenos. I then heavily seasoned it, but like I said, it wasn't all that great. :)

The next day (today), we went shopping. First, I made Karianne's bread, and left it out to cool (after Clark begged a piece, of course).

We bought the following SCD legal items while out:

--almond butter
--coconut milk
--goat milk cheddar
--2 pounds frozen spinach
--red peppers
--yellow peppers
--1 bunch red leaf lettuce
--1 bunch romaine
--6 bunches green onions
--bok choy
--tomatoes
--zucchini
--organic raspberries (99 cents for a little container, yay)

Now, the almond butter, coconut milk and goat cheddar will likely last at least two weeks, but most of the other food will likely last around 10 days (if we're lucky).

Due to my bargain hunting ways, this trip did not break the bank. At Trader Joe's, the almond butter is $5 per jar. The coconut milk is 99 cents a can. The goat milk cheddar is around $10 per pound (I don't buy it often; it's more a treat for my son), which is half the price of any other goat cheddar.

The most expensive produce I purchased was the yellow peppers and the frozen spinach. Both were $1.29 per pound.

OK! Next, I left the spinach on the counter to thaw, and then I decided to be brave and bold and try a triple batch of totally safe mayo in the blender. It worked! It was also delicious so *cough* it's already half gone *cough*.

My last cooking task of the day was meatloaf. I took the now-thawed spinach and dumped both pounds of it into a large bowl. Then I realized it was really really wet, and I figured that wouldn't work well for meatloaf, so I decided to drain it. I dumped it into my colander over another pan and drained it just by pressing down with my hands, since I was short on time.

Once that was done, I put what was left of the spinach back in the big bowl, along with four pounds of beef, about 1/2 a cup of SCD legal ketchup, and spices and seasonings. I made four small meatloaves and tossed them in the oven at 400 for about an hour and a half (I think I accidentally set the oven at 375, which is why they took so long. Argh.)

They turned out OK. Nothing to write home about, but they'll be adequate for the coming week.

So that's all for me. *sigh of relief* I guess it kind of was a marathon, wasn't it?