I need another mouth to feed.

This is an abomination. I have yet to get tired of cooking, but I am getting tired of the taste of my own cooking.

Here's my problem. I'm fundamentally incapable of cooking a meal for 1-2 people. When I cook, I cook quantity. (And quality, of course) Which means if I make dinner for myself, it can also be lunch for the next week. The week I've been eating combinations of fried rice, artichoke and pea tagine, Indian garbonzo stew, and saag paneer for lunch, and I'm thoroughly sick of all of those recipes. They were fun to make, and I'm sure in the long run I saved money by not going out for my meals, but it's only been a week! If this keeps up, I'm going to get sick of my staple recipes, and start moving on the special occasion ones!

I should amend the fact that I do my grocery shopping at four places: Costco, India Cash & Carry, Kyo-po (Korean grocery), and Safeway for the last resort. This means I pretty much get everything in bulk. That's probably the problem right there. But how can you beat the value???

Take tonight's dinner, for instance. Having almost exhausted my lunch tupperware stocks in the fridge at Intel and having had produce staring at me begging to be cooked (I'll be in SF this weekend, so I can't put it off), I made banana bread, brownies (ok those were unnecessary), eggplant w/ Indian spices (I'm really into that Indian cookin...), boiled corn, and I'm about to try and make some broiled portobellas with feta and wilted greens. And if y'all have any ideas for 1lb of spinach and green beans that possibly involves fresh mint, send them my way, because that is the next project. OTW that mint's gonna be in my tea.

Those mushrooms turned out fabulous, by the way. Saute two handfuls of Costo Spring Mix with one large handful of Costco Washed Spinach, garlic, salt, olive oil, and a teaspoon of red wine vinegar. While this is cooking down broil two stem-removed portobellas in a pan until you can smell them (5 min?), and then top with the wilted greens and feta. Finish the feta with a quick turn again under the broiler until it's nice and brown. I don't know if it'd be a good date meal: it's a very pretty dish, but it's impossible to eat delicately. Lucky for me I live alone!

This entry is rather rambling, in between cooking, eating, and drinking two-buck chuck out of my mug. But back to the dilemma...I buy a lot of produce, I cook a lot of food, but I can't manage to eat it all without losing interest in eating it. I also have a limited tupperware stock, so there's only so much food I can pack up to SF for J to eat. We like going out to new places way too much anyways, and I do feel kind of weird cooking a buttload and sending him home with all of it. Like some weird post-90s spin on feminism: "I'm strong-willed and independent, but I happen to have this weird thing about making you dinner." *aside* I read an interesting Salon book review talking about how boys and girls of today are so confused about the gender roles they're supposed to play that they're giving up and deciding for themselves what "masculine" and "feminine" means. Here Here. Sometimes I feel that when I was younger I made certain decisions on this matter and the rest of my life I'm going to find myself living up to them. (i.e. deciding I don't ever want to be a girly-girl. The cooking thing is too closely tied to the love of my stomach to be a gender matter)

By the way, if you need a new cheese to go insane over, Cypress Grove's Bermuda Triangle is probably my favorite of all cheeses, ever. Their Humboldt Fog seems to be more easily accessible, but if you can find the Bermuda Triangle it is to die for. J and I had it as an appetizer at SF's legendary Greens: the only extremely expensive, gourmet vegetarian restaurant I've ever been to, but worth every single penny. I've got the Humboldt Fog in my fridge right now (25$/lb!!! I'm such a brat!) and the melding of a brie-like creamyness with the blue cheese-tasting vegetable ash in between layers of chevre...god I'm drooling. right. now. And I just ate.

I think the problem is Costco. I'm still not resolved on this...I can get bags of produce for what I would spend on one day's need of that item. Say, spinach. 1-2 bunches of spinach will cost you around 2-3$ at most grocery stores. I can get 3 pounds of spinach for that at Costco. Now repeat this for salad greens, onions, garlic, oranges, apples, bananas, and cheese. Do I spend the equivalent amount of money and get less but have less worry of wasting food? Or do I succumb to the economy of scale and find a balance between needing to cook and not waste food or needing time to go climbing/do work with?

It's not really that big of a problem...it's just something I ponder during my resultingly numerous somewhat lonely meals. In the end buying bulk is probably worth it because I do manage to cook it all, and it provides me with a week of meals, the equivalent of which would require some X multiplier on money and time spent on multiple trips to the grocery store + gas.

It's just no fun to cook for one. I need a pig. See, I'd say I need y'all to live with me, except sometimes the stuff I cook...doesn't...quite...turn out well. The days it does I'm all dissapointed that I've got no one to show it to, but the bad day's make me happy that I can only harm myself. The aformentioned saag paneer was less than stellar. It was, however, edible, and I learned thad I need to cut the paneer into smaller cubes. And the brownies I just made turned out tasty, but you can slightly taste the olive oil I substituted for the butter in an effort to use a healthier fat. Butterfat just has too many necessary qualities to sub out in chocolate baked goods. I knew better, but was pressed for time.

Now, if I had a pig, I could feed it the oopses and the bad results and the leftovers that I've lost interest in. Maybe that's why people have kids. Hmm...