experimental food (and why i'm a kitchen rockstar today)

so i'm technically calling this my second try at experimental food for 2010. i sorta cheated for the first one, as it wasn't exactly a new recipe or a new food, but a new technique. last sunday i tried making my own sourdough hot pretzels, complete with dropping them in boiling water and the whole 9.

but this week i was really jumping out of my comfort zone with this recipe for moroccan lentil soup. i've never used garam masala or (to my knowledge) cardamom for anything before, so i basically had no idea how it was going to turn out. overall, i think it was pretty successful -- i mixed some with sammy's peas before i pureed them, and he ate a huge helping -- and of course, i had a nice big bowl-full (and enjoyed it). mike, however, opted out of the adventure tonight, and that's why i'm considering myself today's kitchen rockstar -- i basically had to prepare three separate meals for us tonight. soup and homemade sourdough bread for me (and sam), skillet lasagna and spinach and broccoli salad for mike, and pureed peas (with lentil soup) for sam. AND everything got done at the same time, so we could all eat together. woot!

but the very best part is that we've got lovely leftovers for everyone tomorrow night, so even though i made a slight mountain of dirty dishes, it was totally worth it (especially when mike is on clean-up duty, heh heh).