yay! a functional kitchen

M and I are very happy to be able to cook again even if we're not cooking anything elaborate. More than 2 months of eating out, microwaving meals, heating up cans on a little electrical skillet in the garage, or grilling sandwiches on the Foreman grill definitely took their toll. We're doing our best to pretty much not eat out again and we're loving it.

Here are some of the things we've been cooking:

• Bistek (Filipino dish)
  
• Beef and Ginger ramen soup (Food network recipe was only so-so but it's made me ambitious to try making my own broth)
  
• Sorrowful rice (an old favorite and in joke from the God of Cookery)
  
• Fried rice with roast pork, peas, carrots, mushrooms, and egg (best batch of fried rice I ever made)
  
• Steak Fajitas with peppers, onions, and mushrooms spiced with cumin, cayenne, and lime
• Split pea soup with rosemary
  
• Chicken curry with naan (M did this one)
  

Tomorrow is a night to consume leftovers so we can have a lazy Friday night, but slated for this weekend and next week are 7 vegetable couscous with harissa, veggie pot pies, mushroom or butternut squash risotto, and maybe latkes for the start of Chanukah. I'm also thinking about baking chocolate gingerbread or ginger spice cookies for my co-workers as a little holiday gift and maybe even neopolitan cookies if I'm feeling really energetic.

It's so nice to have ingredients and so many options for meals. The kitchen is not done yet but it feels so much more civilized to cook at a real stove rather than heating something up quickly in the freezing garage and to be able to sit down in a chair at a table when we eat rather than on the floor.

We love our gas stove. So much quicker and more responsive than the ancient electric stove from the 60s.