Cooking with Wimbledon

It's a fond memory of mine - having Wimbledon on in the background and smelling my mom's homemade miracles wafting from the kitchen. Cheering on Andre Agassi and licking dough from beaters.

So yesterday, with storms coming and going and highlights from week 1 of Wimbledon making a steady, ping, ping, ping in the background, I set about being a kitchen goddess. (At least by MY definition of a kitchen goddess. It's open for debate).

Using fresh produce from the Waverly Market, I made mom's homemade squash casserole with onions, cheese and cashews, tomato and cucumber salad in sugar/vinegar, roasted red potatoes, and zucchini bread, complete with grated zucchini stripped with my own vegetable peeler. The 4-hour fiasco was so therapeutic! Rarely do I have spend this much time cooking. I realized the following stars need to align for me to launch into cooking mode:

1. I need to be completely alone.
   
2. The weather needs to be crummy so I don't feel bad about being inside.
   
3. Wimbledon needs to be on, or some other marathon event with consistent sound.

I left Joe a somewhat friendly reminder to NOT dive into all my hard-earned goodies when he got home post-call from the hospital. After all that effort, I want each bite savored in my presence. Is that too much to ask? I've even held off, only sampling the zucchini bread. (And yes, it was amazing! Thanks mom!). Tonight will be the true taste test with a little Spumante thrown in for style. Wish me luck!