Last night I had dinner at Il Palio with Diane Kelly and a faculty position candidate, Jenna Hartel. Jenna’s dissertation was on information behavior in the hobby of gourmet cooking. At one point during dinner, she explained that there are two categories of food hobbyists: the gourmets and the down-home cooks. The latter are concerned with simplicity and low cost, while the former love the exotic and the complicated, which tends to translate (in my experience) to the more expensive.

Anyway, last night at Il Palio, I ate:

• Local Bibb Lettuces - Oven Dried Tomatoes, Radishes and Parmesan Dressing
• Bucatini all’Amatriciana - House Cured Guanciale, Onion and Spicy Tomato Sauce
• Bailey’s Crème Brulée - Bailey’s, Kahlua, Vanilla Bean Custard

The crème brulée was probably the best I ever remember eating, but the rest was just ok.

And I actually got ill when I got home. Blech.

Tonight is a much more down-home night.

Actually the truth is that I’ve had too much going on to feel like I can stop and figure out what to cook at home, so I don’t have a plan and I don’t have supplies. Sometimes it seems too overwhelming to think about what to eat for the next week and I just blank on it and ignore it. Then nights like tonight happen.

I had a bag of pre-soaked kidney beans in the freezer, so I put those in a pot, covered them with water, brought that to a boil, covered the pot and stuck it in the oven at 250°F for 45 minutes while I made a phone call to a friend and folded my laundry.

When the beans were cooked, I drained them. Diced an onion. Sauteed it in veg oil until it was soft. Threw in the beans. Threw in a couple of cups or so of mixed frozen vegetables, a frozen tablespoon lump of tomato paste,* and a jar of spaghetti sauce. Added some salt, a healthy amount of dried oregano, and a bit of red pepper flakes. Cooked until everything was hot and cooked through.

I cooked a couple of potatoes in the microwave.

Then a big pile of the mush from the stove was piled on top of a potato and that whole mess was covered with shredded “Italian style” cheese, and popped back into the microwave to melt the cheese.

I’m eating it now as I type. Actually it isn’t terrible. It isn’t good, but I’ve thrown together much worse.

And so it goes. After dinner I’ll make a menu for the next few days. And a grocery list.

I’m thinking some sort of curried winter squash. I have a surfeit of coconut milk and basmati rice. Yum.

* I freeze the leftover tomato paste when a recipe doesn’t use a whole can. I wrap individual lumps in plastic wrap and put all the lumps in a storage bag in the freezer.

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The 45 minutes of simmering requires a little planning ahead, but this is so easy to throw together.

• 1 tablespoon ghee (make
  it or buy it) or vegetable oil
• 1 generous pinch asafetida
• 1/4 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
• 2 potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper or other chilli powder (optional) (NOTE: this is not the Mexican spice blend called chili powder, but simply dried hot peppers ground to a powder)
• 4 cups water

• Have everything ready before beginning to cook.
• Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium flame until it almost smokes. Put in the asafetida and the cumin. Stir once. Cumin seeds will begin to sizzle in a few seconds.
• When cumin seeds sizzle, add potatoes, tomato paste, turmeric, salt, and optional cayenne.
• Stir and continue to fry for 2 minutes.
• Add water and bring to a boil.
• Cover, lower heat, and simmer gently for 45 minutes.
• Remove from heat and coarsely mash potatoes into the rest of the soup with a potato masher or a slotted spoon.
• Serve in small bowls. Is also good over a little bit of rice.

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