It's been a long time...

It's been a few years since I blogged the last time, and there are many changes and many new pages with the old ones turned to ashes. My son is growing up, and I love him more than the life itself, my closest family is now consists of only him, since I went through a divorce. I live in Canada (as I have been for the last 14 years), and the rest of my family is still in USA (as they have been for the last 20-40 years). I am 33 years old, single mother, UX professional (I decided to stick to my old profession after all, and keep the nursing part at the hospital, home care and rehab volunteering level on a part time basis, and I am very happy with it). I live, I love, I cook, yes, I still cook, although it's been awhile since I wanted to cook for someone except my son (who, I think, the only kid I know that actually likes broccoli). I'm back in the saddle, as they say it, and I hope I will be blogging again. So, lets go!

Just rumblings. :)

Well, apparently I don't have time not only to cook, but to blog either. I have never studied full time and actually cared about results. Right now, I do, and I do again. So, I have no life temporarily. No time for cooking and experimenting either. I abandoned the whole idea of being a vegetarian, since it simply doesn't work in a family where 2 people eat meat, and one doesn't. So, temporarily the hell with it, bring on the steak.

I have been surviving on Tim Horton's combos that I split to 2, and eat through the whole school day, and then come home in the evening absolutely ravenous. This gotta change if I want to ever lose that baby weight I accumulated. A few things I noticed about myself: I absolutely hate to eat cold lunch unless it is a sandwich. I have to have my morning tea/coffee and a good breakfast in a quiet atmosphere. Otherwise I am good for nothing through the day. Therefore, I have to eat out for breakfast, or I have to pack it, buy my drink at school and eat it there. 

So I am going to find sandwich recipes that are healthy, not very perishable, and are edible. And hey, maybe my vegetarian lifestyle will creep back into my life.

It's hard to believe how much my life has changed. I am not exactly an extrovert, I need quite a bit of my quiet time, but having people around all the time makes me happy. It beats being stuck in a little cubicle for most of the day doing sketches and calculations that drive me slowly insane from loneliness. Now I have to talk a lot, plus I have a son (that talks a lot), and a career change which scares me and thrills me at the same time. I haven't been depressed since I left the IT industry, and at some point of time, I thought that depression is going to hunt me through every minute of the rest of my life. Big change always takes courage or despair. Sometimes it is both. As Russians say: "we will live, and we will see" (поживем - увидим).

Baked meat with potatoes, mushrooms and prunes.

Not so fast, but very easy, and very tasty.
It takes about 5-10 minutes to prepare all the ingredients, and then it needs no attention whatsoever for the an hour and a half while it is baking.

Ingredients:
1 lbs of stewing beef cut into small cubes (about half an inch or 1.5cm)
4 potatoes cubed
8 dried prunes, each cut in 4
2 cans of whole mushrooms (or about half a lb of fresh ones)
2 onions cubed
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp of seasoned salt
1 tsp of black pepper
1 tbsp of olive oil (I like the one without any smell)

Mix it all together in an oven safe glass dish with cover. Put it in the oven (somewhere in the middle) for an hour and a half on 380F. Forget about it until it's done. Enjoy :)

Baby Bok Choy Stir-Fry.

This is something very simple, and takes no more than 10 minutes of preparation and cooking.

Ingredients:
About 4 cups of baby bok choy leaves.
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbsp peanut butter
1 tsp sesame seeds
1 tbsp any stir fry sauce
1 tsp of chilli oil.
2 tbsp water

Combine everything but the bok choy in a wok. Turn the heat to maximum. Wash the baby bok choy and separate the leaves, then add them to the wok. Stir for about 5 minutes. You are all done. I threw the sauce away since it is kinda oily, and there is enough of the taste soaked in the bok choy in any case.

This is the first post.

Hello World! Lets see if I have enough patience and time to post recipes here.