what i've been eating

I've been doing a fair amount of cooking since I got here, trying to get back in the groove of making most of my own meals after stress, laziness, and oh yeah, my thesis, totally obliterated that habit last fall.

First up is a pasta salad made with homemade pesto (basil purchased from an organic farmer here in town), Dreamfields pasta, veggies and chicken. As an aside, the pasta tasted just like normal white pasta does, to me, but allegedly has far less "digestible carbohydrate." There aren't too many reports on the actual GI of this stuff. I enjoyed it, but can't say for sure if it meets its claims.

Here is the pesto:



Here are the veggies (broccoli, yellow pepper, zucchini, sundried tomatoes), waiting for their chicken, pasta and pesto friends to join them:



And here is the finished product, which I ate for a million days straight:



Next up is an adaptation of Mollie Katzen's Green Beans and Tofu with Crunchy Thai Peanut Sauce which I adore and first made my senior year of college, lo these many years ago. I wasn't feeling the tofu, so I marinated 3 chicken breasts in soy, garlic powder, fresh ginger, some oil and some Splenda.

First you make the peanut stuff, which I make with peanuts, lime juice and zest. Process until coarse. You add this to some sauteed fresh garlic and ginger and end up with this:



Then I browned the chicken, removed it from the pan, and stir fried the green beans (I used frozen from Trader Joe's, but this is simply divine with fresh):



Combine everything and you end up with this:



..which I also ate for a million days.