Don't you just love happy cooking accidents! Today, I didn't need a hot meal to warm me up but it sounded more appealing than eating a cold salad for lunch. Scanning fridge shelves a week after fresh food shopping meant finding something that still had any sign of life left. Half a somewhat wrinkly-skinned, red bell pepper caught my eye. Then, half a yam and a few odd sized tomatoes, still clinging to the vine they were harvested on in some distant hot-house. I rarely buy fresh tomatoes out of season but today, since I had a few almost large cherry sized, I wanted to taste whatever flavor might be lurking there among the seeds. Cooking is a good way to encourage that outcome from a tomato.

Before rounding up ingredients, I'd reached for my one and only frying pan. Well, it's not actually my "only" one. I had used my "one and only" a day ago. Yes, I should have run a dish batch before my white laundry hit the hot water, but I hadn't done that so I was left with using the skillet from the set of pans I bought 51 years ago. Of course, I'm still using them! They have served--and continue to serve--me well, with the exception of that skillet. It can be a bit of a terror to use. 

Pouring a drizzle of olive oil into my moody pan, I clicked a stove-top burner to "ON" and went to work slicing red pepper, thinking I'd be finished by the time the oil was heated. By the time I had something to add to the pan, the oil was too hot but I was impatient and didn't wait long to add the pepper. A quick grab of a lid would have stopped the splattering at once but since I do not move in anyway that qualifies as "quick" anymore, the splattering was not quelled without a tiny bit of hot oil landing on my outstretched forearm. I think I saved my work shirt from oil stains, though.

On with my chopping, halving tomatoes, and making yam dices. Once everything was in the pan, a quick stir revealed that my pepper slices had become a bit Cajun, though not totally blackened. No problem. "Burnt" is not a new word in my vocabulary.

"I'll be hungry again in 30 minutes," I thought. "What can I add?" The something else was a bag of greens. I thought I was adding a mix of baby spinach, chard, and kale but on closer inspection, flipping the empty bag over as I discarded it, the label read, "Spring Mixed Greens". Tender greens, in fact, like for salad and not ones I generally use for cooking. Oh well, they were in the pot, wilting away. I'd seen Jacques Pepin on a recent TV cooking spot use all kinds of things in his cooked dishes. I don't recall if lettuce was on his list, but it's on mine, now, as something that can be eaten cooked or raw! 

Had those greens been of my usual mix variety, I'd be adding a spot of lemon near the end of the cooking, so to the mix I'd made, I added lemon pepper seasoning and a diced, fresh Mandarin plus some home-grown Pineapple Sage. A few pieces of cooked and chopped chicken and a small handful of unsalted, mixed nuts--Pistachio, Cashew, Almond--rounded out the mix.

Delicious! Next time, I'll add a drizzle of Soy Sauce. Learning to cook for one 101. It's a part of who I am.