Dinner this week

Sunday we had spaghetti with spinach pesto and a salad

Monday we were going to have pizza but a trip to the ER with Havoc intervened. DH and Mayhem ended up at Chili's and Havoc & I had Arby's on our way home.

Tuesday we had the pizza - ham & zucchini, on a hard, cracker like crust. The dough had been frozen, then defrosted & left to rise for about 9 hours on Monday, then refrigerated overnight, then left to come to room temperature & rise again Tuesday. Then possibly prebaked a bit too long. It's hard to say because it wasn't quite the spongy texture I am used to so I don't know if it was all the chilling & thawing or a couple extra minutes in the prebake that caused the rock hard crust.

Wednesday we has veal positano with agnoletti (sp?)

Thursday was take out - teppan yaki

Today we are having pasties & salad. Chicken, sweet potato, spinach & cheese stuffed pasties

Saturday is a friend's dinner party

Sunday is soup (veggie TBD) and sandwiches (probably cheese).

The problem with time

Time has been passing without my notice lately.  This is bad because there is usually something in my oven. Something that burns.  It's not as if I have a lot of other things on my mind. I just seem to fail to remember to set the timer. So far I have overcooked a roast, a pizza, a loaf of bread, a chicken breast and some nachos. I almost overcooked scotch eggs tonight but passed by the stove a few minutes after I put them in the oven and saw what time it was. Then it hit me, if I can see what time it is on the stove, I haven't set the timer. Less than 5 minutes had elapsed since I put the eggs in the oven, so I was safe.

I don't know what is the matter with me. I prep the food fine, no ingredients overlooked, no step undone. I get it into the oven at the right temp & I look at the clock and think "Ok, at such and such a time this should be done" and then I walk away. Normally while I am thinking that thought, I set the timer, but not lately. Lately I have been behaving as if I will not only remember that at 4:30 I have to take the bread out of the oven, but that I will also realize it is 4:30 in the first place. 

Perhaps I have subconsciously decided to try cooking by smell.  There is, with many things, a very brief window of 'wow that smells wonderful', right before 'wow what did you burn?' Problem is, that once you hit that window, your food is already a bit overcooked. Add to that you are in another room, need to wade through the piles of folded & unfolded laundry, find some oven mits and then shoo some small children out of the way of the stove, before you can remove the thing that had been smelling wonderful and lots of things are a bit more than overcooked.

It does make for a change though.  For most of December everything I cooked somehow was undercooked.  Maybe next month I'll get it right.

Dough in the freezer

The plan is working fairly well. I have pizza dough, white bread, cuban bread and brioche in the freezer. The downside is that if I make a bad batch of bread, I have made 2 bad batches of bread. I don't realize it is bad until the bread is cooked and the dough is already frozen. Out of sight, out of mind. I made my favorite cheese bread & on a whim added flax meal to it. Maybe I added too much. Maybe flax meal just shouldn't be in that bread. Then I forgot about it. Then I made the frozen loaf today. Eewww.

On the upside, we now have homemade frozen cookie dough balls and can make a couple cookies in the toaster oven any time we feel like it.