Everyone loves a two for one special right? I do, especially when it’s not enticing me to buy something I don’t need. This  salad was a two for one goal special. It got me closer to my salad goal and to my winter squash goal. And it was tasty. The whole point of this blog post is to ensure that I don’t forget about this salad and that I experience it again. I got the inspiration here.

My salad, however, was made by grabbing a handful of mixed greens, and putting it into a container. I topped it with a bit of kabocha squash and black beans. Then I squeezed a half a lemon over it and drizzled it with olive oil. For some kick, I added a sriracha spiral. For finishing, I added a bit of coarse salt. The product was a treat I was glad to get at lunch time.

I don’t even know what inspired me to put this down as a goal, but I am glad that I did!

This small goal made me more aware of the doodling that I do in day-to-day life. And now I have something else for my black & white wall.

These days I find myself improvising recipes more and more. Not because of a lack of planning, but because sometimes when I am hungry and ready to eat, I don’t even want to be bothered with following a recipe. As a result, I wind up shopping for some recipe I found, and cooking something altogether (or in this case, somewhat) different than what I had planned.

This weekend, for example, I had planned on making Eggplant, Green Olive and Provolone Pizza. This time, my deviance began early. I didn’t buy pizza dough at the store because I know how easy it is to make. I didn’t buy any olives because I knew I had some kalamata olives in the cupboard.

I get home after work today ravenous. With February, I set a goal not to eat any snack food that I don’t make for myself. So, the handful of pretzels or goldfish crackers I might normally inhale while cooking dinner was out of the question. I had some dough in the fridge (with basil and red chili flakes)  and decided that it would be a good enough crust. I threw a cast iron skillet in the oven and preheated it. While waiting for that to happen, I sauteed some garlic, my eggplant, a handful of cherry tomatoes, some mild pepper rings, some parsley, and some sliced “salad” olives. Then I pulled the hot pan out of the oven, sprinkled the pan with grits, and spread the dough into the pan, covered the bread with pre-sliced provolone, and put my sauteed mix on the dough and baked it until it was done. It turned out to be one thick pizza, hence the Mamma Jamma name. And it was good.

When I decided to start putting together this bread, it would not have been out of line to question my priorities.

Let’s just say that there were a number of other things that need to be done. But, I have been on a bit of a roll with the BBA Challenge as of late and don’t want to let the building momentum lapse.

That said, I have been trying to cut back on bread a bit. I love the stuff. Though it doesn’t need to belong on my list of things that I’m not allowed to have at home, I have to exercise deliberate self control. I thought about making a goal to only eat bread that I make at home, but I think that is a bit unrealistic for me at this point. I have been the queen of the sandwich as of late, well particularly in December. And when I’m watching calories there are a number of chains from which I know what to order to be full and to also stay within my intended lunchtime allotment.

Not that any of that is the point of this blog post. The bread is the point of  this blog post.

The recipe basically involved mixing the dry ingredients, then the wet ones. Then letting the dough ferment. Low maintenance!
Though anyone who bakes bread will talk about the precision that bread-baking requires, (While on some other occasion talk about how environmental factors can affect your bread-making….) sometimes I feel a little lazy when I’m baking bread. The instructions said that I should do the windowpane test, but I did not. Instead, I took it’s temperature and said…eh, good enough.

Then, I was lazy when it got to the point where my dough had fermented. I was working on some other things and I simply didn’t want to 1) peel myself from my other tasks and 2) clean a patch of counter in order to shape the bread. Trifling!

However, all’s well that ends well. Funny thing is is that I’ve been trying to write about this bread for six days now. That is how long it is taking me to get to things on the home front. It’s all good though.

Next up = marbled rye bread. Looking forward to it!

As everyone who knows me knows, I have become intensely interested in the US Presidents in the last couple of years. Primarily, I am interested in these people as men. You know, people who have favorite foods, and love their pets. I am thinking about these dudes quite a bit.

A different interest that I have is making thing with my hands. It was only a matter of time before these two things married (or at least got on a path of intermittent passionate trysts). So describes the above painting.

How did I do it? I found a picture of one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Then I played around with it in Photoshop Elements until I wound up with an image that I liked. I printed that out and then transferred the main lines onto a canvas (with the help of some carbon paper) and painted it in. I decided that the canvas itself would be a television set. So, I looked around for images of TVs from the appropriate era to figure out where various knobs, buttons, or dials should go.

For those who don’t know, the Nixon-Kennedy debates were the first televised presidential candidate debates. They were  significant to the outcome of this particular election, and really “changed the game” so-to-speak in presidential campaigning. Interestingly, at the end of the first televised debate, television audiences thought that Kennedy had won. Radio audiences, however, thought that Nixon had won. Here, I cannot resist adding that these debates helped Kennedy build up his image as a fresh, youthful, vigorous leader, when, in fact,  he was very ill. Kennedy had suffered poor health his entire life.