Cooking up a Storm

Well, it's dinner time and I'm just ready to start a nice spaghetti with meat sauce. Or rather, I'm ready to finish the sauce: good garlic and onions, fresh tomatoes, chopped meat cooked separately and strained of most fat, fresh basil, oregano and parsley, good parmesan cooked into the sauce, lots of coarse ground black pepper, a little red wine to keep it loose enough, and then topped with fresh shaved parmesan. Coming with a good mixed greens salad and fresh garlic bread.
I've been home about two weeks and when I got here the kids said they missed my cooking. And with my ankle preventing me from doing much--it's getting better, thanks--my normal cooking had to be ratcheted up a notch. Not like we do fancy stuff here as this is not a NYC restaurant and those dishes often take a basic brown sauce just to start--and that takes 100 pounds of beef bones and 15-20 hours all told--but we still try to keep it interesting.
For breakfast the kids have eaten fried eggs, scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs with cheese, omlettes stuffed with all sorts of good things, eggs in a nest, French toast, a vegetable souffle. That's come with rice, baked potatoes mashed and fried in a bit of bacon grease, home fries, plantains, tacacho (plantains mashed with bacon grease and bacon bits) and bacon, sliced steak, fried ham wrapped around cheese and so forth.
For dinner we've had steaks, roasted chicken with rosemary or done Peruvian style, chicken thighs with vegetarian tomato sauce on fusilli, shrimp sauteed in olive oil and garlic with red peppers, scallions and fresh parsley; mussels posillipo and mussels in white wine; homemade Chinese stir-fry with chicken, chicken burritos with homemade beans, sour cream and rice; bar-be-que with hot links, sweet sausage and chicken; vegetarian lasagna with eggplant, spinach, garlic and three cheeses; lemon chicken (breasts dredged in flour, egg and breadcrumbs with lots of parmesan, then sauteed and covered with the juice of several great limes), fat hot roast beef sandwiches on good Italian bread with roast red peppers and pepperjack cheese, and a few things I'm forgetting.
Starches have included regular rice, basmati rice, yellow rice, plantains, boiled potatoes with saurkraut, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy, potato and egg salad, potatoes au gratin,potato latkas with sour cream, spaghetti squash with red pepper, garlic and sweet onions, homemade macaroni and cheese.
Veggies have included steamed broccoli--almost nightly--broccoli, cauliflower and baby carrot melange with a sprinkling of fresh parsley or cilantro; sauteed spinach with garlic and balsamic vinegar, grilled asparagus, sauteed tomatoes sliced thickly and covered in parmesan cheese, homemade coleslaw, roasted red peppers, stuffed mushrooms, and so forth.
Man, I'm getting hungry. This is good food. About 1/4 of it organic.
And don't forget the breakfast juice: In a blender put a banana, half-a-pint of fresh strawberries, 2% fat milk, good water, orange juice and a bit of sugar in a blender. Add cantaulope as you wish. That will wake you up for sure.
Just passing it on. Keep the food good, simple, clean and your kids and you will stay healthy.
If they were just a little older I could do the rack of lamb en croute parsillade with sauce madiera on a wooden platter surrounded by flaming whiskey mashed potatoes but they're not, so that will have to wait.
Whatever you're eating tonight, I hope it's wonderful, makes you healthy and keeps you happy.