Cold Day, Warm Oven

Sunday was my first day off in quite some time. So, how did I spend my day? In the kitchen. It wasn't one of those beautiful 50-60 degree days we've been having, so I didn't feel guilty hanging around the oven. I'm pretty proud of these loaves even if they are malformed and still dusty from the flour. My next bread undertaking will be a whole wheat flax seed. Possibly next Sunday. After baking my bread I cooked up some curried peanut soup. It was creamy, coconutty, spicy and our dinner guests loved it. I would have posted a picture, but we ate it all.

Katy (one of the aforementioned dinner guests) turned me on to a really neat cookbook she got at an imports store in Omaha (they sell it on amazon.com and at 10,000 villages too) called Simply in Season It is organized into the four seasons (and a fifth chapter called "all seasons") and encourages local, seasonal eating. In addition to a bounty of vegetarian recipes, there are many meat recipes too.

A sampling of winter recipes included: Golden Carrot Bake, Vegetable Vindaloo, Marrakesh Lamb Stew, Stuffed Beets, Maple Parsnip Soup (which I plan on trying next week) and many others. It is written by a group of Mennonites in British Columbia and does wax spiritual at times, but I don't have a problem with that--eating good food is a kind of spiritual connection. Anyhow, I've been enjoying this cookbook and plan on buying a few of the others should the recipes stack up in the kitchen.