Last week was a surprising challenge due to the fact that I had a slight relapse and wasn't feeling up to playing around in the kitchen as much as I had desired. Paul had pity on me more than one night by eating bagels with carrot sticks or other veggies a couple nights and taking me out to eat one night. That being said, I have a much fancier menu planned this week just to pay him back for my slacking week and to allow my creativity to be uncanned for a while.

I got my November Gourmet Magazine this week. The fact that I found this edition meeting my vegetarian creativity needs head-on makes the receipt of this last issue of the famed 60-year-old magazine more distressing.

I think I'd rather start with the positives about this dining experience. . .the soy sauce packets were pre-marked for easy removal of a corner. And as we all know, soy sauce can be very messy. The cut to help the corner tear smoothly eliminated the mess. The spring rolls, were nice and hot, a hint of ginger flavor (which today did nothing for the not-just-morning-morning-sickness) and appeared to be without mushrooms, which always makes the two of us happy.

I just got Gourmet Mag's June issue in the mail two evenings ago and have only been able to glance through it for about 10 minutes while also talking on the phone at the same time. (I know all about what happens when you multi-task. That is why I'm not promising I read everything properly.) This issue seems to have interesting information about tofu and a number of fabulous summer recipes that would appeal to meat-eaters and vegetarians alike. I have attached links to topics that are available on Gourmet.com.

My mother-in-law sent me this very cool idea. I hope she wasn't thinking she wanted some of these for Christmas because I failed to catch the hint. I hope she was just thinking this would make a nice post on ELAR. The cards are 16 for $34.95. There are two copies of each design, which are well-photographed types of cookies yielding intriguing and beautiful card covers. On some of them, it took me a while to recognize what might be a cookie. This is important for people married to designers, which means food has to look good not just taste good.