Sarah got me a cookbook for Christmas. Taste of Home: Cooking for Two: 317 Quick & Easy Recipes Perfect for Small Households. I have been trying to branch out into cooking more advanced dishes over the last few years, but my culinary zeal is somewhat tempered by being horribly exhausted all the time. I very rarely want to cook a whole-ass meal when I get home, and when I do cook, I usually make so much that we have leftovers for about two days. Which gets old.

This book, though, has some good options that aren’t time consuming, don’t require a bunch of ingredients, and won’t have us eating chicken curry three days in a row.

This week, I’m going to try the Goat Cheese & Spinach Stuffed Chicken. Except I’m not going to use goat cheese, because WTF. Who uses goat cheese?

“I’m just going to get some … artisanal asiago,” I told Sarah. We were in the cheese section of our local Baker’s, which has a surprisingly large selection, and I picked up a small bag of grated cheese that seemed as if it belonged in Italy. “You don’t think that it will mess with the … integrity of the dish, do you? Not using goat cheese?”

“It’ll be fine,” Sarah said. “I don’t even like goat cheese.”

Right? I don’t think anybody in the world prefers goat cheese, and if they do, they’re probably the sort of people that use a wine decanter because “it needs to breathe.” No it doesn’t. You’re just trying to justify the $300 decanter you bought at Marks & Spencer.

Anywho. The dish is basically a chicken breast stuffed with spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, and cheese. You can’t go wrong no matter what kind of cheese you pick, and I think a nice asiago will do just fine.

I’ll serve it with baked asparagus. (Did someone say bacon-wrapped?)

I didn’t read much Dorothy Parker yesterday. After school, I came right home and did my first week’s homework for this semester’s online class, which is called, “Self-Care for Educators.” A whole class dedicated to tips for fighting burnout! I can dig it.

It’s exciting because I guarantee, at some point this semester, I will be stressed out about an assignment for a class that’s literally teaching me how to be less stressed out.

It’s kind of like having a class called, “How to Get More Sleep” and scheduling it for 5:00 AM.

I’ll be jumping into Dorothy Parker with both feet this morning. This afternoon, too, after I do a bit of cleaning up in our dining room. (It’s been all cluttered since Christmas.)