Sick bed cooking

I knew it was a bad idea to commit myself to a blog posting schedule. Today, I've got nothing. Well, almost nothing. As Marge Simpson and all other moms know, we never get a holiday, even when we're sick. So when I heard "Mom, what's for dinner?", I responded, "what are you making?" And then I went to the kitchen and cooked.

For tonight, I'll redefine "local" as locally-obtained. It's deep winter here in the north woods, and fresh produce is scarce. Two more heads of garlic are all that remain from my Meadowlark Farm summer CSA bounty. On Monday, friends Joe and Nancy gave me a huge butternut squash from their garden root cellar and a bag of Ware Farm potatoes. That will make likely make a nice soup this weekend.

Salad

Pasta with mushrooms and peas

Pumpkin cheesecake with caramel sauce

A bigger imperative tonight was to use some highly-perishable ingredients that were locally-obtained from my neighbor, Jill, who gifted me yesterday with the fixings for a monster-sized batch of guacamole. In the bag were 9 avocadoes, a bunch of carrots, a sack of cherry tomatoes, 2 lemons, 2 limes, a white onion and a bunch of cilantro. I used about half of that last night for the intended guacamole. Tonight, I tossed some of the remainder into a bowl of mixed greens, along with a little bacon and blue cheese, for a salad. I also made a quick pasta and mushroom dish that I saw on Salon.com last week. Then I opened a bottle of chianti (that goes well with cold medicine, correct?), added some leftover pumpkin cheesecake for dessert, and no one needed to be deprived just because mom is sick.