The first three Thing-A-Day days (including today), all I've done is cook. This might seem pathetic, except this cooking counts for two reasons: first, cooking always counts, because I love to cook, and the time I spend cooking is as rewarding as the time I spend doing any other creative enterprise; second, this cooking counts in particular because I have made STRICTLY THINGS I HAVE NEVER MADE BEFORE! Oh yes! I have done this partly in honour of Thing-A-Day, and partly because I am still in the half-life of Animal Vegetable Miracle, in which I fantasize about making my own cheese. So.

Friday I made stuffed potatoes. James helped, in a pepper-buying, potato-mashing and vegetable-chopping capacity. I baked them in my scalloped-edge orange stoneware bowl and I felt like I was at a semi-fancy 1950s potluck. They were delicious! It did feel weird to be eating them because we did so while watching TV and it felt like we should have been doing something a lot more fancy.

Saturday I made rice krispie squares. I made several different kinds. They were various levels of disastrous. Some of them were inedible (the coffee-flavoured ones--sad face!), and others were delicious but mutated. The delicious but mutated ones even contain tiny M&Ms, because if you're going to bake retro desserts, thou shalt not do it half-assed. Because they taste OK, they are chopped into more-or-less squares (read: "hunks") and wrapped in plastic wrap, in anticipation of lunches next week. It's hilarious that of all the things I tried to make this weekend, the disastrous ones were the easiest. You may not know this, but when you melt marshmallows in a pan, they become EXTREMELY MESSY AND STICKY. No, no kitchen implement you own will help. You will probably just have to move. How do other people do it?

Today I made zucchini fritters and cinnamon buns (from scratch!). The zucchini fritters were delicious. The recipe came from Amy Sedaris's book I Like You, as did Friday's potatoes. Not surprisingly, when you mix shredded zucchini with cheese and onions and fry it in olive oil, something delicious is the result. The cinnamon bun recipe came from a cookbook I got from the library. They aren't baked yet (still in their second rise) but when they come out, I'll take a picture. They already look beautiful, and impossibly neat, like they were prepared by someone else.

The outcome of all this cooking is that I have lots of little bags and containers of things in my freezer. That is one of the most satisfying feelings I can think of. For tomorrow I will make something with paper, or cloth.

Sunday evening to do list: (1) bake cinnamon buns (2) get to L66 in Warcraft (3) watch My So-Called Life. In other words, nothing. And everything.