I've been doing a lot of cooking in the last couple of days (more than usual, anyway). Friday jambalaya, yesterday tomato, cucumber and feta salad, and last night asparagus and bacon with pasta.

I kind of made up my own jambalaya recipe using what I had on hand: the last of the fresh kielbasa, chicken cubes, wilty celery, jasmine rice. Browned slices of the kielbasa, then removed it from the pan and sauteed the necessary trinity of diced green pepper, onion and celery (I should've used more; I think I had about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of each). Pushed that to the side of the pan and browned the chicken. Then I added 2 cups of water, 1 1/2 cup rice and a 14.5-ounce can of diced tomatoes. Salt, pepper and some ancho chile powder. Stirred, then brought to a boil and dropped to a simmer for 20 minutes. Served with parsley, green onion and hot sauce on top. Next time it definitely needs smoked sausage, but Todd was pretty happy with these results, anyway.

I ordered some Father Sam's mini wheat pitas, and they're good. I heated one in the oven to eat with a salad I made from chunks of peeled cucumber, quartered cherry tomatoes, crumbled feta, vinaigrette, oregano, salt and pepper. Todd doesn't like feta so it was good for lunch and good made in advance while August took his morning nap.

Dinner last night was good, too. While I cooked some short, twisted pasta I also sauteed about 1 1/2 slices thick-cut bacon, then took that from the skillet and drained some of the fat. I discovered that I didn't have an onion, so I sliced up four pearl onions and sauteed those in the bacon fat. Then added asparagus cut in 1/2-inch pieces and sauteed to what I considered done (Todd likes his cooked a little more than me and I knew it would get more cooking at the next stage). Then added some pasta water (quite a bit, like 1/2 cup) and the almost-done pasta and boiled a bit to get the flavors off the bottom of the pan into the pasta, then added the bacon back in with a huge pile of grated pecorino-romano. This was pretty, too. I should've taken a picture.