Monday Night Cooking Fest

I'm going to share yet another a little secret with you - I'm not by nature an organized person. Those who know me in my work life are stunned by this. I'm as detailed oriented at work as the best of them. I keep deadlines, balance project budgets, read the fine print. And it takes all my energy to be this organized.

That's why my home life and, by extension, my cooking life, is relatively free of structure and organization. I need my personal time and space to have room to be a little messy, to meander without an agenda, to use this freedom to foster some cooking creativity. It's like resetting me from hyper-organized to my default which is, for the lack of a better phrase to describe it, sort of "Eh, I'll roll with whatever."

For the most part, I get by on not being too organized in my cooking life. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this kind of lackadaisical living is that I don't always check my fridge and pantry before going shopping, and will end up buying food items that I already have.

Right now, the half eaten block of brie is wondering why I came home with six wedges of Laughing Cow cheese. The open gallon of milk is a little insulted by the sealed pint of milk that arrived this past weekend. The orange juice got all excited when I pulled it out for mimosas, but knows that it's about to go into the freezer in the form of frozen juice cubes. An ailing cucumber calls to me. A plethora of vegetables are begging to be eaten before they go bad.

I just hate throwing out perfectly good food just because I couldn't get to cook it in time. On Sunday evening, I finally channeled my Uber-Organized Work Self and made a list of everything in my fridge. My plan this week is to cook anything that would otherwise go bad.

Monday night was part one of the great cooking fest. I made a series of dishes either out of the contents of my fridge, or because it paired with something in my fridge.

Lots of cooking stories to post soon from the night's cooking activities so stay tuned.  In the meantime, thanks to Instagram, I have some artsy foodie photos for you to enjoy.

I made over three dozen chocolate chip cookies that I could bring to the office and to my church small group. Chocolate chip cookies are an easy favorite, but the best thing about them is that they  go with milk. As in, the unopened pint of 2% that's in my fridge.

I caught the cherry tomatoes and bell pepper at their final moments, I believe - some of the tomatoes were already beginning to wrinkle. To these vegetables, I added one small onion, and then tossed everything in olive oil, salt, pepper, dried basil and dried oregano. This concoction went into the oven to roast for 40 minutes and will be tossed with Quinoa for lunch (and quite possibly dinner).

The ailing cucumber got to be showcased in a savory quick bread, with dill, cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese. I'm particularly proud of this quick bread because I created the recipe all by myself. This quick bread recipe is definitely turning into a full blown post at some point.