Cooking Out the Winter Blues

As I mentioned in my previous posts I'm in a serious funk and I need to snap out of it. I think part of the reason I'm so unwilling to move most of the time is that my apartment is ridiculously cold.  Right now I'm in fleece pajamas (as comfy as they sound) and a giant fur blanket and i'm still ice cold.  How am I supposed to get off the couch in these conditions? 

I did force myself off the couch to do some cooking and since this has accidently become sort of a cooking blog I will write about it here. Speaking of accidents, I am also accidently a vegetarian lately because buying meat is so expensive! I can't wait to visit my parents and eat a giant steak.  Don't let this blog fool you...I LOVE meat.  meat meat meat.

But tonight I prepared a meatless dinner and it was nevertheless delicious.  It was Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wah as I learned a few weeks ago) with spinich, avocados and feta.  I love to pretend I'm on a cooking show when I follow recipes from a book so I tend to lay out all my ingredients in front of me

I actually used correct measurements for this one.  Since I'm cooking for one most of the time I tend to reduce recipe measurements so that I only make one serving.  Sometimes this works out well other times I get my measurements slightly off. 

This recipe also required avocados, not shown in the picture.  Just the other day I asked someone how restaurants keep their guacamole green all day.  For those who don't know if you leave cut avocados out for a while they turn this really disgusting black color.  Apparently, if you brush the sliced avocados with lemon they don't get that gross black color.  Lesson learned. 

There were only two disasters when cooking this meal.  For one I spilled the Quinoa everywhere (time to use the dustbuster I recently bought). Then I realized I was using a saucepan I did not have a cover for...in a recipe that called for a covered saucepan.

It's OK though.  You can't get frustrated when you make mistakes.  After the quinoa was cooked, I added the vegetables plus feta cheese, olive oil and a little lemon.  The result? Delicious.