Food; Week 2

Week two of The Great Paternity Leave Food Revolution ended on a wonderful note--a family-style dinner with close friends Tom and Madhabi and their 4-month old daughter. Now some may interpret "family-style" as "too much too eat, and everybody goes home stuffed and happy." And while there was some of that, dinner was mainly characterized by the fact that we all have families now...and babies and toddlers certainly need constant attention. Tonight, this manifested itself as a forkful of food in between diaper changes, burping sessions, and the administration of First Aid; I think the longest all four of us adults held a conversation for was about 3 minutes. Despite all of that, it was a fun time, and made me reflect on how much has changed in the last 3 years. Time was we would all still be sitting around the table finishing a bottle of wine, drinking coffee, and just talking...and now we are all slaves to sleeping and feeding schedules, and ourselves exhausted by 10 pm.

Dinner tonight was whole wheat spaghetti with a marinara + vegetable sauce (including onions, peppers, zucchini, tomatoes, and a few spices), the rest of my three-bean soup from yesterday, and a basic garden salad. Wine was generously provided by the guests, and dessert was a fabulous Texas sheet cake (chocolate/chocolate) baked by Natalia. A perfect end to a great meal...I'm looking forward to snacking on that all day tomorrow.

It felt like enough food, especially given the eating conditions described above. I liked the soup today more than I liked it yesterday...perhaps the extra time gave the flavors a chance to mingle and lend more flavor to the broth itself? (Sprinkling some Parmesan cheese on top didn't hurt either.) The addition of vegetables to my regular marinara sauce proved to be good as well, especially the zucchini. This variation will have to make its way into my rotation...it also serves as a convenient way to use the occasional vegetable that gets left behind in the refrigerator crisper.

On a related note, I'm finding that as I cook more, fewer ingredients linger for days--or weeks!--in my refrigerator. I'm able to use a variety of foods, vegetables especially, in the meals that I am making, and I can tailor recipes to take advantage of whatever "spare parts" I have hanging around. As a result, I'm throwing out less food and I feel like I am saving money (or wasting less, as the case may be). Our pantry is slowly emptying out as I am converting these ingredients to meals...a project for next week may be to take a real inventory of what we have in there and plan meals based on food that we already have. A novel concept.