Cooking again

Good evening!  A beautiful day in Brooklyn today.

Brooklynites!  Don't forget to look up sometimes.  There's actually some space up there.

And night!

I had a lemon/cayenne water bomb this morning followed by and green monster.

Unattractive picture of the end of my smoothie, natch.

I didn't pair it with anything.  I knew I'd be eating calorie-dense food at work later.
I haven't been cooking much lately.  Mostly sandwiches, smoothies, crockpot meals, maybe steamed veggies.  Easy stuff.  But last weekend I picked up some ground turkey at the farmer's market with ideas for a meat sauce.
Today was the day.  I had some brussels sprouts that I first trimmed, then blanched in boiling salted water.

You get the idea.

They cooked a little too long because I was trying to get the perfect shot.  No camera skills and only a Canon Powershot at my disposal made this difficult.  Impossible, actually.  But anyway.

I drained the sprouts and julienned them into little slivers of mini-cabbage.  I diced up some onion:

The perfect dice:  First horizontal slices into the onion

Then vertical slices lengthwise

And finally, slice it width-wise.  I don't explain very well.

I sauteed the onion in a tablespoon each of butter and vegetable oil with several cloves of minced garlic, and then added the brussels sprouts.

Here they are caramelizing nicely.  Only after I threatened, though.

I added some salt and pepper and stirred minimally so as to allow these lovely sprouts to caramelize a bit.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I grabbed the ground turkey (just a shade over a pound) and browned it in a separate pan.

I drained off some of the fat when it was done (there wasn't much) and added it to the sprouts with two large cans of peeled tomatoes, and a little dijon mustard because I was feeling nutty!  Watch out!

Just try to contain me.

I let it simmer for about an hour and I had a small bowl of it over brown basmati rice with a little romano, which wasn't actually that great with it.  Parmesan would've been better.

This pot of turkey-brussels sprouts sauce will probably be good for 6-8 more meals, and I will be sick of it after about 3.  I will then either freeze the rest with a good chance I'll never eat it again, or I will force it upon my roommates under the guise of goodwill.

I mean, I guess I could've GRATED the cheese instead of slicing it like a lazy jerk.  It looks like someone dropped their cheese and crackers in my lunch and only fished out the Triscuits.

I also had this salad of greens and yellow pepper, also gotten from the farmer's market, and the salad dressing I made a few days ago - rice vinegar, honey, soy, oil, garlic.  Success!  Delicious.  I usually find salad dressings intimidating to make.  Good ones, anyway.

 

Does anyone know what kind of green these are?  They're really, really good.  I'm guessing young mustard greens but I'm not sure.

I walked to work and around 7:30 had about 3/5 of a large burrito, of course, with a mexi-coke.

And a fair amount of grazing.

Exercise today:  4.0 miles round trip to work.  My legs are kind of achey, so I think I'm not going to do the Squat Challenge for now, my envy of Jay be damned.
No smoking.
No drinking.

Packing and moving tomorrow, so I have to go to bed, as I have a long day of procrastination ahead of me.  Night!

Kitty says goodnight.  Like, a hundred times a day.