Cooking = what a mess!

It should be obvious, but sometimes it still surprises me that chopping, grating, mixing, sifting, slicing and dicing all create havoc in my kitchen.  But yesterday I decided that I wanted to cook, mess or no mess. Cooking to me is not grilling a chicken or tossing together a simple pasta. That's  not real cooking, it's just a simple meal.  Cooking is getting into the ingredients and transforming them from a list of miscellaneous food items into something delicious and sometimes nutritious. 

Cherries: as previously mentioned, I have a lot of them. I made a wonderful cherry salsa. That involved pitting the cherries, chopping them and red onion, jalapeno, cilantro, parsely, squeezing a lime.  What a mess.

Dinner: a nice piece of fresh halibut was simply sauteed on the stove but what a mess that made as well, splatters all over the stove. But the cherry salsa was perfect with the fish.

Side veggies:  sauteed a bit of the red onion and jalapeno, some diced red bell pepper, diced zucchini and corn sliced off the cob. A tiny squeeze of lime juice and it went perfectly with the main course. However, more chopping and slicing and more mess!

I need a maid or a housekeeper when I get this ambitious. But the dinner was very, very good, low fat, everything complimented everything else and since it had been a while since I did a production such as this, it all made me happy. 

Tonight, more mess. After visiting two produce markets in two days, I have a ton of vegetables to cook so a stir-fry is in order. Baby bok choy, zukes, red peppers, onion, garlic, ginger, cilantro, broccoli, some sort of spicy sauce. I will feel righteous eating this dinner. Maybe it will be sort of like this only messier: