Bizzaro Lunch

Due to gloom regarding my pending unemployment, I may have gotten a little martyr-y when making last week's grocery list. I might have said (to myself) "Fine. Whatever. I'll just have PB&J. And chips." It's possible I let my need for comfort food affect my menu planning in a negative way.

OK. I did, I did, and it is. Sue me, I'm unemployed and a return to childhood makes me feel better. However. This is how I've gained 8 1/2 pounds in the last month and while I'm not feeling FAT per se, it would be a shame to throw away all the hard work I put in for the last year and a half leading up to the wedding. So when it came time to make lunch today, I wanted something with a few more food groups and a few less preservatives than a PB&J and chips could offer. But alas, I didn't buy anything else. So I turned to one of my favorite food divas for an answer: Hungry Girl.

OK listen. Hungry Girl is not lighting the culinary world on fire. That's not what she's trying to do. What she's trying to do is provide healthy recipes to regular people. It's not fine food, it's helping to satisfy the cravings that derail dieters. And it gives great ideas of how to combine foods in ways you wouldn't necessarily think of. Which is how I end up eating the bizarro lunch pictured above.

Like I say. I didn't have a whole lot of ingredients to work with. But I did have a tortilla, a 97% fat free hot dog, and some cheddar cheese, which is how I ended up eating a Cheesy Dog Tortilla Rollup. Not insanely groundbreaking, but not something I would have thought of and a good way to combine some healthy ingredients I already had in a tasty and satisfying way. Serve alongside some grapes from the bottom of the fruit drawer that miraculously hadn't turned and a little greek yogurt with sugarfree pancake syrup (an HG serving suggestion) and you have the delightfully bizarre and cost-effective meal I had that is keeping me a lot more full than yesterday's PB&J and chips lunch.

Now, the Hungry Girl philosophy works a lot better when you keep a lot of her recommended ingredients on hand, but even without them, I managed to find something to throw together in my kitchen. I expect with a little more careful planning and smart shopping, I'll be having a lot more healthy, fun lunches in the future, so stay tuned.

A Brand New Kitchen

Man, if you like cooking and all your cookware stinks, get married. And if you like cooking, but your kitchen doesn't make any sense, get married to someone handy, preferably with lots of time on his hands. I do not actually advise marrying solely for the bounty of gifts or to get a helpful partner willing to do your bidding. But these are major bonuses for the home cook, at least they were for me.

My very wonderful friends and family showered me with tons of shiny happy gifts, mostly for the kitchen, because they know what I like, at my bridal shower. A few gaps were filled in by wedding gifts. We set everything aside because we really wanted to treat the new stuff right (as opposed to the crappy treatment our current secondhand kitchenware deserves). Reorganizing small spaces for maximum efficiency is one of the things my new husband does best, and having piles of "stuff" sitting around, not in their proper places, makes him nuts. So for a week or two after our honeymoon, every day when I got home from work, I'd get a report on what he'd done to make our kitchen an easier place to work. I wish I had some "Before" shots, but here are some long shots of the "After."

Wave hi to Kika, the Cat Who Refused To Move.

Do it with me, now: deep breath in, deep breath out. Gorgeous, if I do say so myself, and I can because aside from picking out stuff for other people to buy me, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Let's go in for a closer look:

Behold! Shelves to hold the mighty overflow of pantry-type goods in our pantry-deprived kitchen. An optimized baker's cart with space for my KitchenAid accessories, stacking cooling racks and baskets, and the kitchen linens concealed in a neat picnic basket. A ghetto baker's rack made from Ikea garage shelves with space enough for all our small appliances (including the new toaster oven that blows the circuit if we have it on at the same time as anything else), as well as my cookbooks and ridiculously vast array of hostess aprons. Plus? The TIME! Shiny gleaming brand-spanking-new Calphalon pans hang on the wall near the stove, giving me easy access to the cookware I use most.

A shiny new Cuisinart microwave and indulgence-laden espresso machine round out our collection of evil-looking appliances, along with the KitchenAid mixed and Krups coffeemaker. The whiteboard is magnetic and mounted on the cabinet closest to the stove so I can hang recipes from its clips. The Tupperware/bakeware cabinet was thinned out to the most useful items only. The baking items were moved to a small, little-used cabinet above the stove. The spices were placed on lazy susans, so that they would AT LAST not be stacked on top of each other. It all makes so much glorious SENSE. Not pictured (because I think I reached my limit of pictures per entry) are the new silverware in the new silverware caddy (BORING), the pot and pan cabinet under the sink, where Kris installed shelves to maximize storage, and the overflow shelf in the basement where my lesser-used appliances and larger serving dishes are stored.

Jealous? You too can have an optimized kitchen. This is the kind of thing my husband lives for. But, I'm afraid since we're both still unemployed, it'll cost ya :)