I believe xkcd said it best:

This is where I have been for the past week, although lucky for me, my cycle has involved more diverse (and nutritious) fare than cheese and chips.

It all began with a butternut squash soup that I made before I started my new job last week (figuring it would be the last chance I’d have to cook for a while). I bought a fairly massive squash, and ended up using only half of it in the soup. Now, given how long it took me to peel, cut and clean that squash, there was no way I was only using half of it. And so the cycle began.

The answer to the squash dilemma lay in the latest issue of Fine Cooking. A recipe for a quick and simple autumn soup that involving tomatoes, squash, chick peas, onion, carrots and kale (although I think one could substitute just about any autumn veggies in here and it would work just as well). This particular combination makes for a very festive colorful soup though.

The more I cook, the better I am getting about judging weights and quantities of things that don’t easily fit in measuring cups (herbs, veggies, etc.), or maybe its just that I can’t be bothered to measure out exact quantities anymore, and am content just to ballpark it. However, there is one area that still illudes me entirely: Leafy greens. I once took a guess at how many bunches of spinach it took to make 1lb, and was off by a factor of 3. Pathetic. It’s no surprise then, that I ended up with excess kale after making the autumn soup. And so the cycle continued.

There are a *ton* of cool things you can do with kale (although I’m not big on the kale smoothie), but since the last few culinary projects had been predominantly vegerarian, I decided to change it up a little and revert to an old favorite:

Roasted chicken legs with potatoes and kale is one of my standbys because it’s just so *simple*. Tear up some kale, chop up an onion and some potatoes, and toss the whole lot in a roasting pan with 1/4c of EVOO and some salt and pepper. Then, season chicken legs with salt, pepper, and paprika and nestle them on top of the veggies. Pop the whole thing in the oven and roast it 450 for 20 min covered, and 30 min uncovered. The result is that the chicken gets nice and crispy, but still moist inside, the potatoes get infused with onion, kale and chicken-ness, and the kale becomes nice and tender. Its a full meal (meat, veggies, and potatoes) all in one pot. True comfort food.

Of course now we have leftover chicken legs and potatoes, which can only mean one thing: curry. The cycle continues…actually come to think of it, maybe cycle isn’t the correct term, maybe it’s more of a “sprint”.