Cozy and Cheeseless
It’s that time of year again…the dead of winter when not much else is happening, so I do a cooking post! Like my other hobbies, my cooking interests keep evolving. Six months ago, I would have said my spouse and I were cheesetarians. We ate pasta regularly, and salads regularly, with plenty of cheese featured in both. Now? Again, it’s the dead of winter, so I don’t feel much like big leafy salads, and for some reason pasta has fallen off the rotation in favour of quinoa. We haven’t even been making omelets. So…next to no cheese. (Except cheesecake. That’s different.) Instead, we’ve been rocking stews and soups, the ultimate in coziness. We bought each other a Dutch oven for Christmas — those are the ceramic pots with an iron core that can go both on the stovetop and in the oven. Which means it’s perfect for browning your meat or sauteing your aromatics (new word for me!) and then throwing everything else into the same pot. Having a new kitchen toy, of course, has revitalized our kitchen game — at least temporarily. Disclaimer I: Those things are heavy (or maybe I’m just weak)! Ours is a 5 qt. pot, and I can only lift it when it’s mostly empty. Disclaimer II: We are not superhuman! We cook something big and ambitious once a week, twice at most. The rest of the time, we order in, or else we eat leftovers or premade food or something else that’s dead easy.…