Kitchen Wrap-Up for February

Our Kitchen Witch has a new spot in the kitchen.

In my kitchen in February: simple food. Not much new. 

We were traveling for around half the days in February, and thus not in our kitchen. When we come back, in around a week, we expect to see some changes which I’ll write about. We missed the 3-day power failure which would have meant no stove! Here are some of the not-at-all ambitious things I did in the kitchen when we were at home. I’ll be sharing with the In My Kitchen blog party at Sherry’s blog.

Toasted sandwiches: an easy dinner.

Salad with leftover lamb roast on a Valentine platter.

Lightly-cooked snap peas with a few other vegetables.

Tofu with bok choi.

Broccolini with shiitake mushrooms and hot-sweet chicken legs.

Things we got done in the kitchen: preparing for the installation of a new cabinet. Moving a bookcase and reorganizing the cookbooks. Getting a new garbage disposal because the old one was making more and more painful noise. Not cooking much! Not worth a photo!

In other kitchens

Visiting our friends Phyllis and Ed in Del Mar, California, after the Birding Festival.

Chicken mole served at a ranch near La Paz, Baja California.

You can see the Mexican Diet Coke. Some of our fellow passengers were enthusiastic about the Mexican
regular Coke because it’s sugar sweetened, but I am into Diet Coke, which I show for Elizabeth!

We were surprised by a very good meal at an airport hotel
on the way to our trip in Baja California.

Fresh local seabass at The Fish Market in Solano Beach near San Diego where we visited later in February.

Cheesecake at the Artifact Cafe in the Mingei Museum, San Diego.

Finally: A Note on Ethics and Choosing Food

Eating meat: a habit I find very desirable because I like the taste and find it satisfying, and also because it’s easy to prepare. A few years ago the news stories on horrific cruelty to meat-packing and slaughter-house workers caused me to greatly reduce my meat consumption. I am also aware of the issues of cruelty to animals and of damage to the environment caused by raising cattle and many other species, as well as the wastefulness of growing cattle feed, and many other negative consequences of meat production and consumption. 

Recently, I’ve been backsliding on my determination to eat a more plant-based diet. But here’s the latest news:

“More than 100 children have been discovered to be illegally employed by a slaughterhouse cleaning firm across the country, federal authorities said. …[For example] a 14-year-old child who worked at a Nebraska facility from 11pm to 5am five to six days a week from December 2021 to April 2022, cleaned machines ‘used to cut meat’” (from the Guardian)

Time to think about all this again! But on our trips, I wasn’t very restrained.

In N Out Burger: wrong for so many reasons.
But so much fun on the rare visit to California!

Blog post and photos © 2023 mae sander