I am the queen of vegetable hash

I cannot stop shredding vegetables. I've got the big box grater and tonight I shredded up two small zucchini, two carrots, and some parsnip, threw 'em in a clean dish towel to squeeze some of the water out, then threw 'em in the pan with chopped onion, chopped garlic, basil, salt, pepper, scallions, and the remains of the chicken from the other night (which has now been used for every meal since). Salt & pepper & a bit of parmesan cheese, and that was our dinner. My Hub was thrilled with it, and I'm pretty proud. We had a bit of toasted bread on the side, and that was pretty much the whole thing right there. Oof, I'm full. Vegetables are fabulous.

I'm telling you, shredded vegetables are possibly the easiest way to get 'em on the table. Once they're shredded, they cook crazy fast, or-- if you're making slaw, which I highly recommend you do-- they soak up flavor really well. We've been going through beet slaw and carrot slaw like mad lately, to the point where I am completely out of carrots after having several pounds of them in the fridge last weekend. If you've got a green veggie side already, and you put some carrot or beet slaw on there, too, then you've got two bright colors on the plate that aren't brown or beige, and it's astonishing how nice it makes the meal feel.

(Bonus about the slaw: it lasts all week and doesn't need to be heated up. Instant veggie side dish.)

I'm currently baking a lasagna, sort of by the seat of my pants, because we hadn't made a bring-along for the week's lunches and time was rather of the essence. I very nearly froze up and didn't do it, because we were out of spinach and the only other obvious choice for an add-in-- the zucchini-- had just been used up in tonight's glorious veggie-hash experiment. Finally I just said, "Oh, fuck it" and put a ton of mushrooms in, along with some olives and fresh oregano and fresh thyme and frozen basil (those little cubes of basil from Trader Joe's are the BEST THING EVER) and garlic and onion and salt and pepper and I forget what else, but there was a lot of tastiness in there. Browned up the ground turkey, cooked the lasagna noodles, slopped/layered the whole thing together with some cottage cheese (my Hub has something against ricotta, and what the hell, skim cottage cheese is everywhere) and a bit of a grate of parmesan cheese, and now it's in the oven. Eventually it'll get topped with cheese and broiled a bit and then I'll let the damn thing cool and chop it up for lunches, but in the meantime I am going to sit here and drink some beer and watch what appears to be the Superbowl. (I voted for the Puppy Bowl on the Animal Planet channel, but alas, the actual game has apparently been interesting this year, so my Hub wants to watch the whole thing.)

It's been a weird weekend and the apartment is more in chaos than it was at the beginning of the weekend, but the bare basics necessary for another week of work have been covered: laundry and lunches. I hope that work is calm enough tomorrow that I can get some of the chaos dealt with tomorrow evening.

Thanks for all your help re: C25K. I'm going to start Hub with a warm-up week of sorts, 30 seconds running/90 seconds walking, and then the next week get to the actual program. I'm planning on impressing the importance of stretching and warm-up/cool-down periods on him, so hopefully he'll make it through without hurting himself or scaring himself off of exercise.

Ah, there's the timer. Must deal with lasagna some more. Later!