when a foodie isn't

Most of my life, for as far back as I can remember, has revolved around food. I plan trips around where we'll eat, what we'll take to eat, how often we'll stop to eat. Grocery shopping for me is not an ordeal. It's an adventure. I get more excited over spotting a Whole Foods than a Neiman Marcus. Williams Sonoma feels like a home away from home. I started subscribing to food magazines like Bon Appetit and Gourmet while I was still in my teens.

Over the years though, there have been times, and not just short ones, when I just did not feel like cooking, times when I didn't even like my kitchen. Those times felt odd but not so foreign as to confuse me. Once, several years ago, I was so out of sinc with food, cooking, and my health that I subscribed to Nutrisystems and had them send me yucky pre-packaged, processed food for several months. I simply didn't want to cook and didn't want to think about food. It was an odd time in my life, the only time I have ever lived alone, so maybe that had something to do with my extreme disassociation with cooking and health. I'm still not sure.



sometimes plain ol' chicken drumsticks just sound good

These days, I mostly love cooking. "Mostly" being the operative word here. Some days I don't want to enter the kitchen and seriously bemoan the fact that eating out, fast food, and ready to serve processed food simply are not options for me. Period. Most days I get jazzed over grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, and local organic vegetables. Some days I actually wish I could drive through a Taco Bell. Now, that doesn't sound like a foodie at all, I know. And Taco Bell is not the worst of my non-foodie fantasies. It's just the worst I'm willing to acknowledge right now. It gets pretty ugly.

I suppose on a very basic level I should be happy that giving into even one of these (occasional) urges would make me painfully ill for days. I'm much better off whining because I will never again eat a Baby Ruth candy bar than putting it in my body and hating myself for it.

improvising, december without an oven

I've mentioned often that I am not a baker. It's not that I can't bake. It's just that baking is neither where my interest nor talent lies. But baker or not, I do use my oven a lot. I should rephrase that; I did use my oven a lot. Our oven has been performing badly for months, and only just before Thanksgiving (with 20+ people expecting a beautiful roast turkey to come out of my oven) did I realize why. It was heating a little, very little, with no air circulation, and this is a convection oven. Yikes! I had thrown out two different oven thermometers recently thinking they were not working. Apparently, they were working just fine; it was the oven that had gone south. 

To make matters worse, if that were possible, and as it turns out is possible, my oven is not that easy to service. It's not very old, but it's also not very common, so it's taken weeks to get someone to agree to look at it, and we still are up in the air about actually knowing if it can be fixed. So here we are in December, more family dinners, the dream of my (once a year only) holiday baking and a chance to use some newly acquired almond and coconut flour recipes, and of course, we do need to eat!  This time of year, at least in our house, eating implies roasting. I roast beets, sweet potatoes, squash of all denominations, onions, garlic, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, turnips, carrots, and meats galore. That is I would if I had an oven. Again, Yikes!

In reality, I guess I sort of have an oven. The clock works. The broiler works. And given 3 or 4 hours with the oven set at 450F, the temperature will get almost up to 300. Of course, there are hot spots you wouldn't believe, and I'm not running this stinking oven around the clock. 

Broiling meat is an option. It means using cuts of meats we don't often eat, those that will cook quickly enough to not be burned to a crisp on the outside. I like slow roasting or braising, especially when it's cold, so I usually focus on bigger pieces of meat and dense vegetables.

These chicken legs are a rarity in my kitchen. I bought a package yesterday, partly because they were on sale at our natural foods store, and partly because the kids like them. My plan was to toss them in the freezer. Of course, I had hoped, silly me, that our appliance repair duo would get the thing up and running when they were back out yesterday. That didn't happen, it had been a long day, and I had nothing planned for dinner. We decided on broiled chicken legs and gluten-free Dutch apple pie, another food that rarely makes it into our house. A weird dinner for sure.

chicken legs, seasoned and ready for the broiler

I seasoned the chicken directly on a baking sheet with Frontier Herbs savory seasoning mix, Spice Hunter Chef's Blend, sea salt, and a bit of olive oil. Coconut oil would be better for baking. I was being lazy. The seasoned chicken was in the broiler, set on low,  about 20 minutes. I turned it regularly as it browned.

ready to eat, simple and very good

This was a serious lazy cook's meal after a busy day. We didn't even add a vegetable, though sweet potatoes would be great, as would steamed broccoli. Dessert, which we have maybe 3 times a year, was a store-bought apple pie. This is a first. I virtually never buy anything ready-made. It was almost completely grain free (a bit of rice starch) and sweetened naturally without sugar. GK was less than fond of it, but he eats this kind of stuff more often, way more often, than I. It's been over a year since I ate anything calling itself a pie.



Mine is the sad little piece alone on the plate. His is 3 times the size and loaded with whipped cream. 



I have to share a recent breakfast, note my computer keyboard in the background. More about my versions of Paleo breakfasts soon. These shrimp, by the way, are available frozen from Wellness meats. They're from the US west coast, safe, and responsibly caught.

scampi for breakfast