still haven't bought the right rice

so, after mentioning to some people at work that i basically cook every day, this week sort of failed at that. i ordered chicken in black bean sauce from the take-out chinese down the street, which was really good, but i feel they must use some sort of strange super-grease to cook everything in.
also, as i went to trader joes, i had dal and cous-cous on sunday, then canned chicken chili with the leftover cous-cous. which, while not bad, is certainly no rice. (although i've been using some strange long grain rice until i go to the asian food market where i can buy cheaper short grain.) quesadillas were also present at some point in the week.

then i went to dc...i fortified myself for the road trip with lime vitaminwater (bleh) and goldfish crackers and orange chocolate chip cookies. the food on the trip was not all that exciting (although there were a lot of hot dog stands, akin to new york. i had one with mustard and sauerkraut outside the hirshhorn museum. nearer to the white house, i stopped at another stand for a sprite. it was so cold the inside was sort of slurried. it was amazing.) although my friend in baltimore had an electric deep fryer, and her fiance made some excellent fried chicken and onion rings. au bon pain, einstein's bagels, starbucks and ruby tuesday rounded out the trip. like i said, not very exciting.

I mean, I ate other stuff too

The end of Lent brought bacon (Boar's Head, which was ok, but I probably wouldn't buy again, but it did come in a nice small 8 oz package) and tilapia.

I also made lasagna, which was...ok. it had peas and yellow squash and onion in it, and asiago cheese on top. I also put in a some canned diced tomatoes, which were maybe old? or not cooked down enough?

You know, as soon as I make this public, of course my cooking skills drop off. Although I did make berry muffins today from Baking Illustrated. As a note to myself, I subbed in ricotta cheese for the sour cream.

i know i must have eaten something this week

i tried to make some sort of chili thing last week. it was only so-so, half of it is still in the fridge, which means i should get rid of it soon.
i "fasted" on friday, meaning i had a waffle with pb+j for breakfast, a pear for lunch, then ate after church at 7:00 pm. saturday, however, brought dyed eggs and making babka (traditional polish easter bread? from the cookbook "from blinis to borscht" which i re-checked out of the library for the occasion. the traditional russian easter food, kulich and pashka, seemed to much for just me.)
still haven't eaten any meat yet, although i'll get around to it soon.

mmm, sugar

well, the piroshki lasted half a week, which i suppose is good, as eating a cup of fat in one day would probably not have been healthy.
i made a half recipe of orange pudding cake in 4 ramekins, and the first one was very tasty. a little bit too sweet perhaps. the rest i let sit for a few hours/overnight, and while edible, were not something i would serve to other people. but fresh, definitely. time to try the chocolate one.
also, not to be too much of a company girl, but lipton's tomato with croutons cup-of-soup is not too shabby.
friday, i faced a distressing lack of food in the house, but i had potatoes. i would assume that these potato pancakes are sort of like latkes, but i don't think i've ever had latkes before. also, this calls for grating an onion. this had tears actually running down my face in about 5 seconds. it also didn't actually work very well. it made a sort of onion pulp, but the layers of onion got caught on the blades and usually peeled off instead of going through. anyway, it was incredibly painful. i diced the rest of it.
i made banana chocolate-chip bread from "baking illustrated," a gift from my sister, the first recipe i think i've made from it. while very good, i think i'm going to have to accept the fact that nothing beats my sesame street banana bread recipe.