Reprinted from http://steinermp.wordpress.com/

It's funny how books can influence my activities. Not funny ha ha, but funny strange....but that's a whole other blog topic. Anyway, Anne gave me Julie and Julia for Christmas, so I'm determined to finish the book before I watch the movie. Besides, Lindsay says the book is much better than the movie, so I figure I'll enjoy the best first.

Anyway, as is often the case, this book is inspiring me to try new recipes. I remember my mom watching The French Chef with Julia Child and while I sometimes joined her, I never had an interest in learning to pull the pig skin off a pork shoulder or extracting marrow from a bone. In fact, that might be what sent me into a 30-year tendency toward vegetarianism.

Reading the book though, has convinced me that I should try some new recipes or at least, something I haven't made in a long time. Yesterday I made cabbage rolls for the first time in about 20 years. I combined parts of two separate recipes because I couldn't find one that used the combination of ingredients I wanted to use -- ground turkey breast and brown rice. Then, of course, I didn't have enough marinara sauce so combined that with a can of chopped tomatoes. Turned out perfectly. Or they would have been perfect had we not gone for a walk while they baked about 15 minutes longer than they should have. But my husband -- ever easy to please -- pronounced them terrific.

So what shall I cook today? I woke up with a hankering for lentil soup. I know -- most people wake up with a hankering for doughnuts or Cocoa Puffs, but not me. I wake up thinking about what to have for supper. The cookbook of choice today is an old favorite -- More-with-Less Cookbook -- which has the easiest, most basic lentil soup recipe I know of. Lentils, onions, parsley, basil, thyme, or whatever I can unearth (or unsnow, as the case may be) in my herb garden.

Though we rarely have "dessert", if I get really ambitious, I might make a pie for Fred. Unlike Julia and more like Julie, I'll use a purchased pie crust. Long ago, my husband judged a pie contest. The winning pie maker had used a purchased frozen crust, and since I don't like pie anyway, why bother wasting much time on something I'm not going to eat?

However, we have some pears that are looking more and more like they need to be eaten and since I don't like pears I may as well make a pear pie. The husband will be ecstatic and if he's happy, I might be able to talk him into giving me a foot massage. It is true that food is the way to a man's heart, or hands, in this case.

Thus begins my "day of cooking dangerously." Thank you Julie and Julia.