Hello Cooking, My Name Is

Part of my Rubric for Retirement is promoting skills related to a healthier lifestyle.  This means cooking; what in the world is that?

I used to cook, every night, from "scratch."  It wasn't usually fancy but I was known to make zucchini egg foo young and sweet & sour soybeans in my lower-income, hippie days.  In the 80's I often made delicious fried chicken and real mashed potatoes, meat loaf and slow-simmering pot roast with potatoes and other veggies on the stovetop.  The 90's were a blur of stir-fried, quick meals.

Once my kids entered high school and began cooking on their own, my time in the kitchen whittled down to a mere splinter of the hours I had previously devoted to providing a meal for the family.  Into her college years my daughter worked in a healthy foods grocery and my son took jobs chopping veggies in restaurant kitchens, working his way up to TJ's and LeMaire at the Hotel Jefferson.  He learned exactly what seasonings or wine to match with any food you could imagine.  When Uncle Grumpy started raising a small herd of beef cattle and almost danced with delight as he grilled and scarfed down slabs of meat every night, my interest in hanging out in the kitchen decreased even further.

My love of organizing has resulted in an efficient, well-stocked kitchen, but one with null activity.  The veggies in the fridge were purchased with noble intentions and a pure heart, but they often sit unused.  Never one to do well with an all-or-none effort to improve something in my life, I guess I'll have to believe Marla Cilley and take baby-steps.  Marla Cilley--the Flylady

This is a recipe I made last Easter.  My notes on the copy remind me that it took 2+ hours to assemble.  However, it was delicious, fed a crowd and gave us extras for days.  Bacon, Kale & Raisin Strata

To make the prep less intense this time around I broke down the cooking into stages:

• Week before--buy the bread (I used inexpensive French bread) and let it stale out in the refrigerator so it's easy to slice into 1" cubes.
• Several days before--cook up the extremely crisp bacon and set a guard so UG doesn't sample any of it.
• Before cooking up the veggies, cut up the garlic, onion, bread, cheeses and place each in separate bowls.
• Sauté the cheap, bagged kale in batches, according to the recipe directions.  Cook extra and store in containers in the fridge to use in omelets and, with bacon and dried apricots, as a easy main dish.
• Forget about mixing everything together in a large bowl that's difficult to wash in the kitchen sink.  Just put half of the veggie mixture into the bottom of the pan(s), add all of the bread/cheese/cream mixture on top of that, and finish with the remaining veggie mixture and cheeses.  Drizzle any extra cream sauce over the top.

Even though I used multiple little bowls for the chopped ingredients, it seemed to take much less time to wash up than it did at Easter.  Not having to traipse over to the laundry tub to wash an enormous mixing bowl was a plus, too.

After baking and enjoying the first meal, this dish can be frozen and eaten a few weeks down the road.  I'm planning to take a big pan of it to the beach, for my first trip there in 25+ years.  Won't it be nice to just warm it up and enjoy it with the first cup of coffee, listening to the waves and watching the sunrise?