Is rainy weather the perfect recipe for good food?

The weather in our area this weekend turned out to be rainy and mostly yucky, so we stayed indoors...a lot. What better thing to do when you're stuck indoors...than eat? And boy did this weekend sure turn into a food-centric one.



Yesterday, we made our regular pilgrimage to Sprinkles Cupcakes to replenish our cupcake supply. (Phew, glad that's done...we were starting to go into withdrawals!)

On account of my Midwestern upbringing, whenever it's rainy and cold outside, I kind of feel like having chili (and corn bread!). So we ended up having that for dinner last night. I tasted the chili while I was cooking it and sort of felt like it was turning out tasteless (or rather that it tasted too much like tomato only), so I ended up dumping a bunch of chili powder, garlic, and other spices into the pot...and boy did that put some hair on our chests make it turn out spicy.

There are a couple of foods that my dad really loves to cook -- homemade egg rolls and creamed eggs on toast. I guess they both rubbed off on me because every now and then I find myself making them too.

My dad cooked creamed eggs on toast for me during my last visit to Iowa, but it's been awhile since I've had his egg rolls. To be honest, I don't even really remember what's in his recipe (other than some ground beef, bean sprouts, and cabbage...I think). About 5 years ago, I ended up catching an episode of one of Emeril's shows on Food Network in which the menu involved vegetarian egg rolls. (For those interested, the recipe is here.)  We Midwesterners really like our meat, so I ended up adapting Emeril's recipe a little bit to also include some ground beef.  (To be clear, my dad and I both make egg rolls in our own American/Midwestern style which is most definitely not authentic chinese.)  If you've ever made homemade egg rolls, then you know that making them is time consuming. But I take food seriously, so...I spent a good part of this morning making and flash-freezing ~50 homemade egg rolls for us to fry (and eat) later.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Another dish that I love to make is lasagna. (It's one of my all-time favorites!) And for at least a couple of weeks now, I've been planning to cook it. So this evening, I went back into the kitchen to make lasagna for tonight's dinner.

So...all I really did this weekend was eat. (And I'm ok with that.)

What are some of your favorite dishes/what foods do you crave and do you find some of the foods you make are more suited for particular seasons?

On the non-food related side of things, we went to see The Adjustment Bureau on Friday. It turned out to be a really good movie (and sparked an interesting conversation about free-will versus fate).  

So, what did you do this weekend?