Experiments In Cooking

I think I mentioned in a fairly recent post that I've been experimenting with some new recipes. Specifically, I got a vegetarian cookbook a couple of weeks ago and usually, when I get a new cookbook, I look through the recipes, find two or three that sound appealing, and only cook those two or three. Which is kind of a waste of the other 100 pages of the book. So this time, the goal is to go through the entire book, from start to finish, cooking one meal from it a week.

Which means, of course, that it's going to take me roughly three years to get through this experiment. It would make far more sense to cook two or three or hell, eleven meals from the book per week, but (a) the recipes are all pretty fancy and involve ingredients that are hard to find and expensive to buy and (b) did I mention it's vegetarian? And McMoose is an unrepentant carnivore? (Aside: I always mix up carnivore and cannibal. It makes for some awkward conversations.) So. One recipe per week.

This week's recipe (which was delicious, by the way...even my unrepentant carnivore of a husband has agreed to add this to our list of "Meals We Like") was haloumi cheese and fried tomatoes on wheat bread. Haloumi cheese, for those of you who, like me, have no knowledge of cheese beyond mozzarella and cheddar, is made of goat and sheep milk. And since I have the kind of toddler who turns up his nose at a french fry, I was skeptical about how well this whole haloumi thing would be received.

As it turns out, the same kid who gags at the very sight of a scrambled egg loves sheep cheese. Go figure. So he gobbled down his share and due to the delicious nature of the dish, McMoose and I gobbled down our shares, which is what led to the meltdown the next day. The meltdown that started like this:

Luke: Cheese?
Me: You want some cheese?
Luke: Yes.
Me: Okay. [Go get him some cheddar]
Luke: Noooooo!
Me: Um...I thought you wanted cheese.
Luke: More cheeeeese!!!
Me: Well, here! [Offer cheddar again]
Luke: NOOOOOOO!!!!!
Me: Dude, seriously? What? Do? You? Want?
Luke: MOOOORE CHEEEEEEEEESE!!!!
Me: This IS cheeeeeeeese!!!!
Luke: LU-LU CHEESE!

Ah. Well. Of COURSE his favorite cheese would be the expensive kind that's not sold at the regular supermarket.