Cooking interrupted.

We used to cook a lot. Honestly! Since Natalie came along, we typically only get to cook on the weekends. This past weekend, we made three notable things:

1. Nancy's kale soup! In our "box" or in our case, "bag" I noticed a big bunch of kale. Since Alec doesn't usually eat strange vegetables, such as kale, I thought we'd try the soup recipe. I didn't have arborio rice so I substituted jasmine rice. Instead of onions, we used the leeks from the "bag". Topped with some shaved parmesan cheese - it was delightful! Alec even liked it!

2. Chinese-style chicken and noodles. When my sisters and I write about Chinese things, we sound them out phonetically. So what I did with the chicken was a hong sao -- stewed with soy sauce, sugar, and a little wine. (sidebar - Natalie and I went to Whole Foods to find us some dinner for Sunday night. There was a huge palette of cleaned chicken thighs from Rosie's. It was such a steal at $12!) I was putting Natalie to sleep while Alec finished up the meal. As the chicken was cooking, he made some udon noodles. After the chicken had cooked through, he took them out and threw in the udon noodles and some green beans to finish cooking in the chicken juices. By the time I came down, dinner was ready! All of it together made for a super quick and yummy home cooked meal.

3. Shepherd's pie. Each Sunday, I attempt to cook something that will take us through to Wednesday night. So this week, it was Shepherd's pie. We had great potatoes in the "bag", pared with some petite pois, and a mix of "the ground turk" and some ground beef with some onions. Alec had it for dinner tonight and told me that it was more like deconstructed Shepherd's pie because nothing stuck together. I'm going to have to ask DeeDee how she used to make hers -- we have a hunch that her secret sauce is french onion soup!