Hello all, Valah here.

So, Raven got a full time job as a college Instructor! Hooray!

This full time job means that he will be getting home around 10pm Monday through Thursday, which means that I will be the one cooking dinner those four nights. Now, of the two of us I am the one who has worked as a cook in multiple restaurants over the years, but at home, Raven has been the primary cook, with me only jumping in when I got an urge to make something.

In recent history my urge to make something has usually been spurred by a backup of leftovers in the fridge from a few nights of Raven cooking more than we ate. Then I would make either a “pot lunch” or a “fridge cleaner” soup. Now what are these things? Well, a “pot lunch” is where I take a selection of ingredients and cook them all together in one pot. It usually comes out as a sort of extremely thick stew. A “fridge cleaner” soup is precisely what the name implies: I take all the items I deem compatible from the leftovers in the fridge and put them together in a soup. Both of these meals are both effective at clearing out the fridge a bit and generally at least somewhat tasty, but 1.) it is summer, and 2.) even I don’t want those sorts of dishes every day.

I have a bookcase full and overflowing with cookbooks. It is about time I started using them, instead of just reading them.

On Monday I did do a version of “fridge cleaner” soup in the slow cooker, but you start with what you know, right? Besides, we did have a lot of leftovers. And I used a seasoning I have never used before: “Ras el Hanout blend.” The label says it is “African inspired” and perfect as “a seasoning for soups,” so I had to make a soup, the label said so. It went over well enough. Raven thought that maybe it was a curry. It did have that sort of flavor. I had been going to make naan to go with it, but I had a bit of an accident with my new filly Stella that evening, and when I got home I had to do first-aid things and hurt a bunch and really didn’t feel like cooking or baking.

On Tuesday I made a chicken stir-fry. It’s still almost a one-pot dish, but at least it wasn’t a soup! Plus, I had to cook the rice, so that’s two pots! (well, a pot and a wok, if we’re being precise). That had its own hiccup, since I pulled chicken out to thaw at 2pm and forgot it in the sink until I went to start cooking about 9pm. Having no idea how long it had been at room temperature, I put that chicken aside to cook up for the dogs later and opened a few cans of chicken for the stir-fry. The cats were more than happy with that, because they get the liquid out of the canned chicken. If I’m not careful they might learn to sabotage my chicken-thawing in the future just so they get the “chicken juice” from the cans.

I promise, the next post will have pictures. I didn’t think about taking any pictures the first two nights, since I hadn’t really thought about blogging my culinary adventures yet.