Hi. Here is what you'll be eating for a week if you are me, my life partner, or somebody who decides to cook exactly what is described below:

First, you must go to the grocery store and buy a lot of food. Take all the food home, put it away, and ask yourself: where in the hell are the chicken tenderloins? And the goddamned turkey sausage, where did that get to? Stomp back to the grocery store with your receipt, retrieve your missing food, and stomp home. Several hours later, you will realize that you are missing a tub of arugula. Which you also paid for.

Giant, you are chipping away at my love for you. Please stop.



Once you get your chicken back, marinate it for an hour or so in beer, worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and sugar.

For some reason, I was just reminded of the fact that I think I heard Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me A River" for the first time this weekend. As it turns out, the world is right, and that song is very pleasing to the ears, especially while you're browsing around an upscale furniture store. Now all I need to do is listen to some Rihanna and some Amy Winehouse, and I'll be all caught up on the last three years of popular music.

I really have not ever heard any of Amy Winehouse's music. Nor have I heard that "Umbrella" song. I thought I would just eventually come across these things organically, but now it is clear that I must seek them out if I am ever to experience them. What a strange, compartmentalized world we live in now, with our iPods and our customizable internet radio and our husbands who endlessly download interchangeable albums of instrumental music (right now, we're listening to Band #47 That Sounds Like Mogwai And Juno And Explosions In The Sky And Godspeed You! Black Emperor).

Huh. I just watched the Rehab video. I did not expect her voice to sound like that. Kind of thought it was a spoof at first.

Wait! And now I've watched the Cry Me A River video. I have heard that before, way back when, and I didn't really like it the first time around. But that's not the song I heard this weekend. Maybe it was a remix or something, I don't know. I'm washed up and tired.



Roast three red peppers while you're marinating the chicken. Might I add that roasting red peppers is my new favorite thing to do? So cheap. So easy. They make everything delicious, and you get to feel smug for not buying the jarred version.



Speaking of expensive jarred things, do you have any idea how pricey a tiny jar of pesto is? I didn't. And the cost of a crate of clementines shot up to ten dollars this week! Ten dollars! I go through crates of clementines like water! I don't appreciate having to change my daily eating habits because of some stupid recession, America.

Anyway, this recipe called for a quarter cup of pesto. Things had to be changed around, because I am not willing to pay for the store-bought stuff but I am also not in possession of a food processor. So I just put a bunch of basil leaves, some pine nuts, some parmesan, a glug of olive oil, a can of diced tomatoes and two of the roasted peppers in my grumpy old blender.



We saw There Will Be Blood this weekend. My God. What an endless source of delightful quotes (one of the best is up there, in the right-hand column, where it will probably remain until I die). Ever since we left the theater, at five minute intervals I've been saying "I'm going to bury you underground, Eli," and then chuckling softly to myself. I want to write Daniel Day-Lewis a fan letter, thanking him for the most satisfying moviegoing experience I've had, ever.

Re: above photo: cook the turkey sausage with onions and garlic.



Then add two cans of diced tomatoes, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the roasted-pepper-tomato-pesto-sauce, and simmer a little bit more.

I have just finished swishing sesame oil around in my mouth for twenty minutes, just like those "oil pulling" people say I should. I plan on keeping this up for a month or two; I'll let you know if it gives me superpowers.



Wow. As of now, this post has been in my "drafts" folder for two nights. Let's hurry it along.

In that bowl, we've got a half-box of slightly undercooked pasta, a drained and rinsed can of canellini beans, some spinach, some mozzarella and some parmesan. Don't be a dumbass -- use a bigger bowl than I did, or else you'll never get that stuff mixed up well enough.



This looks pretty, huh? With the sausage-sauce, and then the grape tomatoes, bread crumbs and parmesan? I baked it at 375 for thirty minutes or so, but was unsatisfied. Next time, I will use a 9x13 casserole pan like the recipe told me to use. I will also make sure the pasta is even less cooked before it goes into the oven (it was verging on mushy when it was finished baking) and that the meat sauce reduces a little more in the pan (there was some unnecessary juiciness going on in the bottom of that dish).

Or you know what? Just don't bake it at all. Or, even better, only bake the grape tomatoes/breadcrumbs/parmesan, because they were delicious. Oh hey! Why don't you do that in the beginning, while you roast the red peppers? Genius. I am going to do exactly that next time, i.e. in a few days, because I have a bunch of leftover sauce and the other half a box of cooked pasta, waiting patiently in the fridge.



This next dish is the bastard child of a recipe from Ashley and a recipe from Epicurious. Let's see if I can remember what it was that I did.

First, cook some onions, garlic and paprika in olive oil. Then add a box of quinoa (we had to go to Whole Foods to get it. The entire experience made me uncomfortable. What is it about fancy, virtuous grocery stores that I so hate? When I walked out of there with my status-symbol Whole Foods paper bag, I felt like I was getting one put over on me. Or maybe it was just the sudden realization, mid-trip, that I probably loathed every single shopper in the place, and not just because they were clogging the aisles and blocking my access to hippie South American seed-grain) and cook it according to the instructions, except for the "water" part. Hah! Chicken stock, please.



Chop up a regular, non-roasted red pepper. Drain and rinse a can of black beans and a can of corn. Puree four diced tomatoes and your last roasted red pepper.




Ooh, remember your beer chicken? Dice it up and cook it with olive oil, coriander, cumin, cayenne, salt and pepper.



After five minutes, add the vegetables. Cook it five minutes more.

Then dump in the quinoa, the tomato-pepper puree, a bunch of chopped cilantro and as much lime juice as you can stand.



BEAUTIFUL. Ashley, I tip my hat to you. We just finished eating this, and it was divine. Even more so with a fried egg on top. Mm! Mmm mmm mmm!