A whole weekend of nothing...

One of a set of small plates my sister in law brought me from a trip to Japan.

Here it is, already Monday...the trend of not cooking continued through the weekend, but not by busy schedules or happy events. I woke up Saturday with a feeling of unwellness, a feeling that only increased as the day progressed. We were supposed to entertain friends Saturday night- canceled- and I was supposed to have lunch with a few of the girls on Sunday- canceled- what a bummer. This morning I have put some frozen meatballs and sauce in the crockpot so I can at least feed my family tonight. By adding some beef broth, canned tomatoes, and barley to some bags of frozen goodies from the freezer, Ben made a wonderful soup in Saturday, and soup is exactly what I needed (thank goodness again for both crockpots and well-stocked freezers). Still not well today, so off to the doc with me this afternoon- can't risk being ill for our trip to Florida in less than two weeks.

The sushi on Friday night turned out surprisingly well. I cheated for this first time and used imitation crab sticks (I know, shame on me), and paired them with strips of avocado and red bell pepper. I followed the directions on the back of the nori package and spread the first sheet with two cups of the prepared rice. This resulted in huge a huge roll with TOO much rice. I made two more rolls, using half the rice, and these turned out quite nicely (a helpful tip is to cut the roll with a serrated knife). The pieces looked very nice, and tasted pretty good too, but the nori seemed very tough, almost like it was too thick (I did check to ensure that I was only using one sheet). I made the mistake of not purchasing a good quality soy sauce for dipping- the Kroger brand sauce is much too salty and shall only be used for cooking. The wasabi was hotter than any we had had before and I thought Christopher was going to fall off his chair, he was laughing so hard at our reactions (I swear, it made my ears hurt and Ben's eyebrows were sweating). Overall, not bad, but I think we will stick to eating our sushi out...

We finished dinner with noodle bowls made from leftover roast. The wonderful thing about noodle bowls is that you can put just about anything in them and they turn out good. I brought some chicken broth to a simmer and added to it some minced garlic and ginger, along with the leftover sauce from the pork. Once it was simmering I added the pork, cut into matchsticks, and some thinly sliced bok choy. When we were ready to eat I ladled the "soup" over some prepared ramen noodles (Meijer had been out of both udon and soba noodles). Chris declared this delicious (the ramen was a plus in his mind) and went back for seconds (and thirds on just plain noodles).

Here's the leftover noodles and soup (I again forgot to take as photo while serving).

Well, before I managed to get this posted today, I not only made my visit to the doctor, but Ben made it home bearing not only my prescriptions, but also a box of Kroger fried chicken (gotta love him for trying to take care of things), so the spaghetti and meatballs shall have to be tomorrow's dinner...