Leftovers (part I)

The first weekend (my first, back from vacation), I went totally hog wild and bought far too many fresh vegetables, and a small chicken. I roasted the chicken a la Nigel Slater. It was fantastic - but I obviously could not eat even a small chicken in one sitting.

(slight aside: his book, Appetite, is one of my all time favorite cookbooks. Anne Fadiman wrote an essay in her book, Ex Libris, click here for a review titled “Never Do That to a Book” in which she broke bibliophiles into two categories: courtly lovers and carnal lovers. Since reading it, I have at unexpected moments found myself making the same division. Nigel Slater is a carnal lover of food. I am a courtly lover of books, but a carnal lover of food.).

This past weekend, in an ineffective attempt to rein in my buying impulses, I brought a shopping list:

• Arugula
• Swiss Chard
• Leeks

Items not on the list, but bought nonetheless was:

• Eggplant (they just looked soooo good)
• Zucchini (but, they go so well with eggplant)
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Tarragon
• Peaches
  

Sigh. Of the items that I bought, only a third had been my intention.

I began with an omelet – must keep up my strength for the cooking ahead – and then, having realized once I got home that if I didn’t cook some of the vegetables immediately, they’d go soft and unpleasant before I did, I grilled them on my George Foreman grill (My apartment does not permit gas or coal grills, and the Foreman works very well for vegetables. And “Panini”)

Then I moved on to other things.