In the Kitchen

It is no surprise that I spend much of my time at home in the kitchen. My style of cooking is from scratch in the sense that it is laborious and takes time. This is okay. This is my choice. 

But sometimes I get tired of it. This usually happens on days when I make so many things in one day that I'm in the kitchen for literally hours, just moving from one thing to the next.

I had one of those days on Saturday. I started at 6 a.m. with the bread dough and was mostly in the kitchen for around 12 hours. I mean, not in the kitchen continuously, because I do take breaks here and there, but the majority of my work and time on Saturday was spent cooking. I was very over the kitchen by 6 p.m.

It was, however, a very productive day, and helpful for the coming week, because of course not everything I made was consumed on Saturday. 

Because I was curious, I actually wrote down everything I made throughout the day. 

Of course I'm going to share here with you. You expected something else?

--Coffee. Always first, and always chicory coffee. I make it in a french press.

--Cream of buckwheat cereal for the family's breakfast. It was a cold, snowy morning, and we were out of both eggs and bread.

--Elk stew. A make-ahead for the coming days' lunches or short-on-time dinners.

Elk stew in progress. The things on top are frozen cubes of pureed tomatoes, and the jellied juices left from cooking a pork butt.

--A loaf pan of rendered tallow. Rendered in the oven with the stew.

--Baked strawberries/blueberries. In the oven with the stew and tallow.

--Hot cocoa when the children came in from playing in the snow. Cocoa powder+sugar+salt+vanilla+milk.

--A New-York-style cheesecake, for the next day's birthday.

Before baking.

--Chocolate syrup, for a couple of gallons of chocolate milk.

--Four loaves of sourdough bread.

--Two half-sheet-pan pizzas, the crusts made with some of the bread dough.

--Ranch dressing, for pizza dipping.

--Ricotta cheese, made at the end of the day with a gallon of milk that somehow got shoved into the back of the refrigerator and was way past its use-by date.

I also made things like tortillas with peanut butter and a salad for me, but that's more assembling than cooking.

Anyway. That was my day on Saturday. Most of those things made leftovers and about half of them I still have on hand, so it was a good investment of time.