My Sweet Chilean Nan

iIn an attempt to eliminate the many shelves of cookbooks that span my kitchen I came up with a plan to cut out the best recipes  and create one large scrapbook. This was not without hesitation due to the destroying of the books. When it occurred to me that I could just take photographs of the pages and save them on my computer. With the move to  Portland sneaking up in  two  short months sacrifices must be made for space and they are very low on the priority list next to some other books I just couldn’t part with.

               

This is when I discovered an app on my phone called Genius Scan. It allows you to categorize photos, tag them and group them accordingly. This I know will have many uses in  the future. It excited me so much that the first thing I wanted to do was make a list of things touse this app for! With a pile of cookbooks around me and a growling empty stomach I pushed forward and  devised a plan to tag by meal, main ingredient, original recipe book, health benefit and cooking technique. I have only gotten through half the stack but I am proud to say it’s working out great and I can sleep easy knowing I can re-gift them or  donate them unscathed.

Ruffling through so many books was side barred by a grocery list for tomorrow and my hunger now. I came across several  pizza recipes many of which I needed to make my own dough for. Bread is something that I have yet to master, in fact I tend to avoid all recipes with yeast. This makes things rather tricky.  Coming from the Philadelphia area I have a huge appreciation for excellent bread. And my attempts at it in the past did not have the crust and fluff ratio that I appreciate in a good hoagie roll or anything else.

In an attempt to create anything appetizing with my day-before-food-shopping-leftovers I remembered Andrew’s hilarious anecdotes about his “Sweet Chilean Nan”. He jokingly calls the packs of  his favorite Indian bread (the joke coming from his favorite chili flavored variety). I grabbed a plain one from the cupboard, threw on some diced tomatoes and  low fat mozzarella and some Italian seasoning  all of which I had left from making  bruschetta. I then remembered I had some pepperoni turkey that I bought too much of for a dip earlier in the week. And of course everything’s better with wine! And why was I so happy?

1. I love finding uses for leftovers.

2. I love making meals that even a ramen noodle slurping college student can afford.

3. Cooking, although fun can be tiring with other tasks at hand, so easy can come in handy!

4. I now have a solution to all of my “but I don’t want to make dough” needs.

5. I always get a kick out of sneaking in healthier options like low fat cheese, turkey pepperoni and fresh tomatoes vs a high sodium sauce.

6. Fresh ingredients and wine always make me feel fancy.

7. Throw in the Netflix movie Hitchcock’s  “Notorious” that I was not only enjoying while eating but would soon be able to cross of my IMDB 250 list.. I’d say I had plenty of reasons to smile.  Isn’t she the spitting image of Deborah Messing(Will & Grace/ New hit show SMASH)? I can’t get it out of my head.