Week 1 - Recipe #1 (Les nouilles avec les légumes)

I have been cooking off and on for several years now. There have been myriad triumphs as well as disasters. For every perfect bruschetta, there are batches of oily brownies. Over the years it seems everytime I have been in a rut, cooking/baking helps me center myself. Perhaps its the mixing of ingredients or maybe it is the singlemindedness of losing myself into creating the perfect cupcake. But the rut that I am in now, I don't know what to call it. It is the kind of rut you find yourself in on a sunday when you wish you could get out of bed and go out in the sun. Except it takes too much energy and when you do manage to drag yourself off the sofa (leaving an imprint of your butt) you can't manage to even dress yourself without feel overexerted. Or when you get to the mall and waiting in line, the children behind you just happen to bawl louder then usual and seem to be doing it the exact moment the throbbing in your head might just burst out and splatter your brains out. Well I am talking about that rut. The feeling that you are somehow just whiling your time and cannot seem to focus on anything in your life. Of course a pyshciatrist might say there are hidden issues; but then who doesn't have issues? It's simply better to not dwell on your "real" problems and lose yourself in a rut. The nowhere land where time is hazy and you can drive to your destination without remembering the actual drive.

So today I found myself in the above rut. To try to get out of this rut, I went to the library and picked out Julie Powell's book, "Julie & Julia." I have read about 56 pages so far and am already feeling better. Though Julie is in a far bigger rut than I, I seem to identify with her. And if she can while away her blues with cooking, I have decided to follow in her footsteps. So here is the blog for the next 52 weeks of my life. To try a new recipe every week. It may not be the perfect medicine for my blues but I may be able to focus on one important thing: cooking. And who knows perhaps cooking can be the answer - while traversing the hidden mysteries of sumptuous recipes, I might while away my blues. Anything is possible....

So here goes: Week #1 - Recipe #1 (Les nouilles avec les légumes) - I have of course decided to give all my recipes a name in foreign language - it seems exotique and inflates my deflated ego to think I can cook a perfectly simple (perhaps not easy) recipe all on my own and if publicly declared can seem time consuming. The above translates to noodles with vegetables. I have of course forgotten a good chunk of the french I learned in the university. Well to start off, I sauteed vegetables (peas, cut asparagus, soft boiled potatoes and red bell peppers) in olive oil and added soft cheese (any soft cheese will do). Once the potatoes had turned brown, I added a dash (I love this term - it could be anything from half a teaspoon to two fingerfuls) of oregano, red pepper and basi. After about five minutes, I mixed in marinara sauce and the a packet of tofu shirataki noodles. I also did my math and it seems I have a recipe here which is about 300 calories. Go figure! I have only managed to eat about half of this while I am writing this blog. I must admit however, the tofu shirataki noodles are a bit rubbery. As this is my first try with these noodles, I will aim to give it another go.

First foray into cooking to while away the blues has worked with a help of this blogging. However, they remain on the outskirts of my mind. As such, I will continue to cook for the next 52 weeks and see if maybe I can manage to cook something sumptuous (have been waiting to use this term in a while) and maybe come up with a recipe on my own.

Until next week, here is Bee signing off....