I spent the entire weekend in the kitchen. Prepping food for our extreme version of the Autoimmune Protocol.
A handblown glass compost receptacle (only slightly chipped: $3 at a thrift store) lends elegance to any food prep session…
I got cases of organic cucumbers, zucchini, cauliflower, purple cabbage & mushrooms on Friday, so I focused on those vegetables.
Luckily my #2 kid, who just moved into my basement suite, had only beer & sausages in his fridge, so I was able to fill it up with my overstock vegetation. No doubt his friends were awe-struck by his apparent commitment to vegetables.
I do most of the cooking & all of the meal planning around here. Not because I like it. I actually don’t like cooking at all. But because Matthew’s health is really bad and he can’t.
So I do.
I may not like it, but it feels really honest. Taking unadulterated plants & animal parts & turning them into delicious & (hopefully) healing foods.
I found myself wondering about my great-grandmothers for the first time in my life this weekend. What their lives were like. Pretty much like my weekend, maybe. Except on repeat forever with wood-fired cookstoves, no birth control & no vote.
It’s like a form of time travel to spend long days in the kitchen. At least for me.
My #1 kid is a sous chef in San Francisco & voluntarily spends all her days in the kitchens of the happening-est restaurants in the Bay Area.
But to me, as a person who would have no regrets if I never had to cook again (as long as the quality of my food didn’t suffer) working with unmodified food intensively for 2 days felt as though our 100-year obsession with convenience food-products had been put aside.
It’s like I am continuing from where we left off before all that convenience-madness happened. But with a few perks like electricity & the internet.
Here’s what happened in my kitchen this weekend:
Zucchini canoes
- Zucchini canoes with ground lamb & chicken;
- Cauli-rice;
- Tabbouleh;
- Marinated Cauliflower;
- Collard Greens & mushrooms;
- Zucchini pasta with avocado pesto;
- A triple batch Martha Stewart’s Cauliflower & watercress soup (AIP-modified);
- A vast batch of Everyday Maven’s Roasted cabbage;
- Green salad;
- Beef Bone broth (Simmered for 36 hours!);
- Slow-cooker brisket (actually, Matthew did the brisket);
- Kalua Pig (it was a 2 slow-cooker weekend);
- Baked Halibut;
- Steak & lamb kidney (hey hey, Matthew did that, too);
- Beef portobello burgers;
- Two rounds of Coconut rooibos lattes. They are actually incredibly soothing. And when the love of my life is this unwell & I have to spend the weekend doing something I don’t like, warm soothing drinks are good;
- And I blanched & froze a bunch of zucchini;
Here’s what my fridge looked like on Sunday night:
Ready for an AIP workweek!
