Things I like to cook

I am supposed to post today (it's Sunday) and I'm not really in the mood to tell you about another museum we went to this week. It's wintertime, and either we freeze our behinds off at the park, or we find inside spaces to play in. This week we checked out the MOMA: Materials Lab. We had fun but my friend, Paula did a better job writing it up.

I've been exploring my culinary side and making some interesting things.

• sweet and sour brisket with mashed potatoes. Delicious. 
• mashed cauliflower and potatoes. So easy and a great way to trick your kids into eating a vegetable. Cut up a whole cauliflower into bits. Peel and chop one potato. Cook them together with 1 clove of garlic in a pot with about an inch of water. You want to steam them until fork-tender. Drain and return to the hot pot, off the heat. You want the veggies to be as dry as possible. Then, add them to your food processor and mash them up. You need to get the potatoes as mushy as possible to get the right texture. Add milk, butter salt and pepper. Just like you would your favorite mashed potatoes. I usually add some goat cheese too, since I don't use much milk. My daughter actually prefers this recipe to regular mashed potatoes. 
• Five-minute bread. Outstanding results for very little effort. Mixed up a batch of dough yesterday while the kids were watching TV, and had a loaf ready for dinner. Prepped another batch this morning to have with our brunch with my in-laws. (We bake 1 pound of dough at a time.) Although we're going to be careful, lest I become more dough-like than I already am
• Omie's Carrot Salad. When I was nursing Claire, I was lucky to have my parents and my mother-in-law come visit me every week. (Not at the same time, which helped immensely) When she came, my mother-in-law, who the kids call Omie, brought me this amazing carrot and chick-pea salad. Years later, she's finally shared the recipe with me, and I made it for the first time today. 
• Dyed rigatoni for crafts. Super easy and fun. Take cheap white pasta, food coloring and rubbing alcohol. Mix the dye and alcohol in baggies and add a handful of the pasta. Squish it around until the pasta has absorbed the color. Spread flat to dry. (Pictures to come.)