I love it when there’s nice light in the kitchen when I’m cooking dinner. I should take more advantage of that in the summer months. Because when winter rolls around it’s not a pretty picture. Ha! Get it? I crack myself up.

I bring you a spontaneous pizza crafted from puff pastry and topped with chicken, monterey jack cheese, feta cheese, spinach, pears and cherry tomatoes.

It used to be that I cooked a lot. Lately, though, it’s become a bit of a rarity. Dinner, you say? How about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Or some dino-shaped chicken nuggets? Or (gasp!) McDonald’s? I’ve made a couple of homemade pizzas here and there, but the stove and oven have been woefully under-utilized.

Inspiration struck yesterday, though. Some purty tomatoes and fingerling potatoes were eying me from the counter, in need of some cooking before they passed along to the Land of the Spoiled Produce. Oh, and I also bought a big ol’ log of goat cheese at Costco the other day that was begging to be used. (Oh, how I love goat cheese.) So I cranked up the stove, the oven and the grill and had dinner on the table when Scott pulled in the driveway.

I love to bake with Devin, but today I was in the mood to crank something out fairly quickly. I’d been drooling over this carrot bread since I spied it in the recent Better Homes & Gardens. Other than grating the carrots, everything was easy to put together. I had one slight mishap when I was removing the loaf from the pan and it broke in half, but I stuck it back together and poured the glaze on top so you can’t even tell. We each had a slice and the rest is going with me to work tomorrow.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of spinach. I told my cousin once, when I was probably eight, that if his mom was looking for stuff in the grocery store and there were too many people around, he should park the cart in front of the spinach, because no one ever wants spinach. So it would be a bit more peaceful there.

Of course the only form of spinach I was familiar with at that point was the cooked variety. All soggy and smelly and icky.

I can’t remember when I tried raw spinach. Sometime in the 1990s, I imagine. I developed most of my food sense after I moved to Chicago and started hanging out with people who were the opposite of my picky self, including my husband. Now I like to put it on everything. Pretty much every pizza I make, without too much interference from my kiddo, has spinach on it. His preference is always ham and pineapple or plain pepperoni. But he always eats the other kind too, and doesn’t pick the spinach off. (He does, however, pick off the kalamata olives. What’s with that?)

I still don’t like the cooked variety much, though.

I’m not sure sometimes. I think fondly of this site, but I don’t seem to find the time to give it love lately. With the dreary grey coldness of January in Michigan, though, I need to push myself to focus on my creativity. That was fairly easy to do when presented with a lovely window seat at The Green Well today and a scrumptious bowl of mac ‘n cheese. Couldn’t resist a photo in that case. Now I shall have to think up some photo ops over the weekend.

I ate some good stuff this weekend. Fortunately I had my camera with me to document things.

Friday was dinner with friends at The Winchester. I didn’t snap pics of the plantain chips because I was to busy gobbling them down. The sweet potato and goat cheese pierogies, however, got the attention they deserved. So good!

Saturday’s food adventures amounted to many samples at Costco and a microwaved Morning Star Farms Chik Patty, none of which seemed photo-worthy. Although the fake chicken really is good. I swear!

Today I got around to making the recipe I found earlier this week that made me salivate. My only regret is that I couldn’t locate the lavender. Still, the scones tasted awesome. (For my future food-styling efforts, I definitely need to find some plain, cheap plates for a less busy presentation.)

I cooked dinner without a net, varying a couple of other dishes I’d put together in the past. We had chicken and apricot puff pastries and fruited orzo. And now? I’m full!

I rarely eat out. You wouldn’t know it from the past several days, though!

Dev and I were famished after the Children’s Museum on Sunday so we grabbed a bite at San Chez. That would be the berry risotto above. Creamy!

On Tuesday I had lunch with Edris and Chelsea at The Green Well. I tried to resist my mac ‘n cheese urge, but their’s is just the best.

I have no pics of dinner at Marie Catrib’s that evening, unfortunately.

And today I met up with Amy for lunch at the Grand Rapids Brewing Company. Tomato Basil Pizza to be exact.

I’m brown-bagging it for the rest of the week. Honest!

The recipe called for two cups of raspberries. I didn’t feel like measuring so I dumped the whole bag in. A few of them ended up more berry than muffin. That can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Lunched with Edris today at Marie Catrib’s. If you can believe this, I don’t normally get dessert with my lunch. I reserve that vice for dinner instead. But how could I resist? Hummingbird cake. Pineapple-y deliciousness.

OK, not really. It was one coffee (watered down with chocolate) and one kiddie hot cocoa. It was a rainy morning and the Water Street Coffee Joint is just a few blocks from my mom’s house, so why not? Devin wanted to keep his cup because he thought it was so pretty. I have to say it’s a huge improvement over their past take-out cups.