When you’re in recovery from some traumatic medical situation, you take any bit of progress you can get. Sometimes, it’s just a sip of water. Sometimes, it’s managing to walk an extra 20 feet. And sometimes, it’s getting rid of the everyday reminder of when you couldn’t eat and had to feed yourself through a tube.
Super Sunday
Superbowl Sunday is a bona fide holiday around here: the championship game (which we always hope will be good and not a blowout) and also the true end of the football season (a sad thing indeed).
The broccoli gratin, having been eaten to the point of people scraping the last traces of cheese from the dish, had to be recreated for Sunday. Even with a smaller group, it didn’t last. Neither did the guacamole I’d made.
I also ordered some dashi and it arrived in time for Sunday’s bash.
This made a world of difference in the tempura dipping sauce, which was spot on. I made a lot of tempura, and by the end of the night, only a lonely green bean remained, having hidden itself under a tray.
A few hours before the game, I had gone to the store to pick up a few things, and decided that there was time for some braised short ribs. Got them browned, then sauteed some onions and garlic in the same pan, added some red wine, beef broth, spices, and a couple teaspoons of tomato paste, threw the ribs back in, and about two and a half hours later, had this.
Boy, were those good. I’ve been eating the couple that were left over for the past two days, with sauteed zucchini, mushrooms, and onions. It’s just as good now as it was Sunday, but I’m down to the last of it. Might be time to make more.
Every day’s a birthday
Saturday night, my uncle said he’d never appeared on the blog. I told him he’d be first up with the next update. Here he is, hanging out by the ribs.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here.
The Boy turned 21 the other day. When he was growing up, we thought he might never make it that far.
Since it was his birthday, he got to request the dinner menu. Kebabs, he said, and some corn to go with it. We went with that.
I made bread earlier that day, adjusting the recipe so the dough was a bit firmer than the last time. I also rolled it out a bit more thickly than the last time, trying to keep the raisins contained and the dough from splitting
The final proofing.
Much better than the last time.
All four loaves went into the oven, and came out about an hour later, nicely browned and with the hollow thunk that means they’re ready.
Very pretty. I could pick around the raisins and try the bread, but that seems like a lot of work (and bread’s a hard food for me to eat anyway), so I’ve yet to actually taste the bread.
That evening, we had the kebabs. The original plan was to grill them, but Mother Nature decided to give us some winter rain, so they went under the broiler instead. They turned out well.
My aunt also had a birthday this week. Her party – her 29th birthday! – was Saturday.
Way back at the 4th of July party at her house, she’d suggested ribs and shrimp for the party. Since this party was going to be fairly large, we picked up 27 pounds of ribs – six slabs. I brined those for about ten hours, then rubbed them about an hour before putting them on the smoker. Four and a half hours later, the ribs were juicy, smoky, and ready for gnawing.
I carved them into manageable pieces, put out a bottle of homemade barbeque sauce that I’d made the night before…
…and we were set.
There is more to life than smoked ribs, hard as that is to believe. We also had a broccoli gratin.
This disappeared very quickly.
Cole slaw, scratch from the vegetables to the dressing.
We also had shrimp and various munchies. I’d also made a chickpea salad and hummus, and at the last minute decided to make some bread and butter pickles, which you can see peeking in at the bottom.
The slaw, assorted crudites with fresh dip, and nuts to snack on.
No birthday is complete without a cake – carrot cake, requested by my aunt and made by my mom.
And no birthday cake is complete without candles…
…which then have to be lit.
Eventually, the fire is put out.
And then, it’s time for the goodies. This is just a sampling.
Let the games begin!
A lot of people showed up for this fiesta.
Yes, Virginia, there is winter in Florida
Winters in Florida can be rather schizophrenic: almost 80 one day can be followed by a 50-degree day with lows at or below freezing.
We’ve had a couple of weeks like that now. A few days of spring-like weather followed by a few days of actual winter weather. The other day, we had a real, hard freeze overnight. So, in come all the plants that could be moved, and we covered up the peas, broccoli, and collards to help them through it. Before covering those, though, we had to have a little harvest.
A handful of sugar snaps.
A bunch of collards.
The next day, we found this on top of one of the storage bins.
That is real, live ice. Thick, too.
Fortunately for all of us around here – where people barely manage to get by driving in the rain we get on a regular basis and couldn’t possibly drive on the ice we get on rare occasions – this storage bin was in the shade. The other ice that had formed overnight melted very quickly.
Wednesday night: spring rolls and quiche.
The longest prep time on both of these is with the chopping and slicing. The spring roll ingredients: cabbage, bok choy, carrots, leeks, red onion, sweet yellow onion, mushrooms, garlic, a touch of soy, a splash of rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and five spice powder. All of that was sauteed and then rolled in pasta wraps this time, rather than rice paper, then given a fast fry.
The fast frying ensures that they won’t be greasy, and keeps everything from turning into a shell on which you could break your teeth.
My sister was excited, and did a happy dance for us.
I then turned my attention to the quiche for the rest of us, carnivores that we are. The idea started out simply, with ham and cheese, and perhaps some spinach thrown in. That, however, was just a jumping off point.
Ham, potatoes, mushrooms, leeks, red and yellow onions, garlic, and some Jarlsberg.
That went into a homemade pastry shell, and then was topped with a milk and egg mixture that also had salt, pepper, and a touch of red pepper thrown in.
Forty minutes later, a fabulous quiche with a super flaky crust. It will be just as good in the morning for breakfast.
Back to our menu planning: I asked my mom if we should have hummus or chickpea salad or both. Both, she says, since you’re making it.
Both it is. I’ll be able to make these two on Thursday, and hopefully everyone will stay out of them until Saturday. I also need to whip up a batch of barbeque sauce, since the last batch I made is finally down to nothing, and the rub for the ribs. Oh, and I have dough for four loaves of bread chilling out in the fridges that will need to be rolled, bathed with the cinnamon and raisins, given the final proof, and then baked off. We have three servers coming in Thursday, too, so it looks like another busy day around the HQ for me. Since that is the case, it’s probably also time for me to grab a nap.
It’s the big 6-0
Not for me, of course. I’m creeping up there, but I’m not quite there yet.
One of my aunts is turning 60 this week. Way back at her 4th of July party, she said that for her birthday dinner, she wanted ribs – my ribs.
No problem.
Since 60 is a milestone, the “ribs for dinner” rapidly turned into an Event. My mother suggested that the gathering be held at our place, and volunteered to have the food. That is, she volunteered to have me make the food, although she does intend to make the carrot cake that my aunt requested and that was such a hit at the last gathering.
“How many people will be here?” I asked m mother, the wheels turning in my head as I thought about menus.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe 30?”
Right up there with one of our usual gatherings, then.
Sunday is the Superbowl, so we’ll need a menu for that as well. It will be quite a busy weekend.
Planned menu:
Ribs – a given, since they were requested
Shrimp – ditto on the request list
Chicken breasts, for those who don’t eat pork and don’t like seafood
Baked beans
Coleslaw
Hummus and crudites or chickpea salad (or both)
Guacamole and chips
Some vegetarian thingie I haven’t figured out yet (although I would like to try a zucchini, red and sweet onion tart with gruyere that’s knocking around in my head but that no one seems to want but me)
Perhaps a soup of some kind, as it will be chilly again this weekend after a couple of days of schizophrenic-like 70-ish degree weather that will follow our mid-20 lows the past couple of days
Maybe some vegetarian spring rolls that I can mass up from the batch I’m making Wednesday for my sister
And about those spring rolls: turns out, just about no one likes rice paper but me, so the last batch were not as excellent as everyone wanted. This evening, while picking up some things, I also picked up some egg roll wrappers, and Wednesday, I’ll be prepping some spring rolls that will be little bundles of lightly fried goodness wrapped around tasty, sauteed vegetables. I’ll also be making a ham/potato/onion/jarlsberg quiche for those of us who enjoy both meat and quiche. This evening, I whipped up another batch of roasted red pepper soup, since the last batch disappeared with a frightening rapidity between my mom and I. Now, if I only had a bunch of red pepper plants churning out tons of red peppers for me….
On Superbowl Sunday, we will also be having more tempura, and I’m considering some lobster tails to throw in with whatever we have left from Saturday. The beauty of this menu is that a lot of it can be made ahead (assuming I can keep family members from picking off tastes over the next couple days), or it doesn’t require a lot of babysitting (toss the slabs of ribs on the smoker and turn them every so often). This makes it much less stressful the day of the event.
Wednesday, in addition to the spring rolls and quiche, I’ll be making a few more loaves of bread (cinnamon-raisin, of course, since that’s what everyone wants around here), maybe some Italian loaves, and maybe something that I’ve not yet tried – focaccia? Been awhile since I had focaccia. Thursday will be sides day: slaw, hummus/salad, beans. The ribs will go into a brine on Friday night, get a rub Saturday morning, and then hit the smoker around noon. I figure by Saturday evening when people start arriving, the only thing left to do will be to throw it all on the tables and tell people to dig in.
At least, I hope it all works out that way. We have a few more servers arriving, which will likely be here Friday afternoon, and since Friday evening we’ll all be out celebrating my little brother’s 21st birthday – another milestone! – Saturday morning will also be for finalizing software setups on those new machines.
What a week(end) this will be.
Ride ’em, cowboy
Flipping channels tonight while waiting for some damn server thing to finish, I stumbled across Cowboy U. Take eight people, put them through the motions of being a cowboy on a working ranch, and one of them gets $25,000 at the end (at least that’s what I think they said). I’m not one for reality television in general, but this one caught me.
Parting is such sweet sorrow
In some cases, perhaps, but not this one: my breakup with PEG is imminent. We’re scheduled for tube removal on February 8th in the afternoon.
It was a little amusing, our visit with the gastro guy. Young guy, friendly, funny. He tugged on the tube, pulled it back and forth (which made me want to smack him, since, you know, it hurts a bit when they do that and then for some time afterward, not to mention it allows more granular tissue to form – the stuff that makes it look like the insides of your gut are trying to escape – which sticks to the gauze dressing and pulls if the gauze rides up too closely to the tube, and which then dries and has to fall off or be cut off, etc.). He tells us that he can probably pull it out right then and there, but it would be painful, a bit barbaric, and pretty messy. The more humane way, he says, is for them to knock me out, send a scope down to snip the balloon, then pull it out and sew me up. Hey, I’m all for that, since that’s how they put it in.
I’m looking forward to it, although I know it will involve some discomfort again when they pump air into me. It will be so very nice not to have to worry about the tube getting tangled, not have to do the daily cleaning rituals to keep things clean, and get rid of the itching around the tube placement – since it’s a wound that’s constantly trying to close, it itches almost all the time, and it’s a bit raw where the flange of the tube rests and rides against my skin.
Of course, this means that any medications I may have to take in the future will have to be crushed and I’ll have to drink them down. Eww.
Going to ground
It isn’t enough to feed a family of four, but it’s a nice snack.
Those were the first handful of sugar snaps pulled off the vines. The collards remain as yet unharvested, but that’s going to happen soon – they’re taking over the line and need to be eaten.
Friday night, my sister decided she wanted to try a new restaurant. I’m not a huge fan of Indian food – although I love naan – but I’m always interested in other cuisines. The rest of us had also already eaten, but since her planned dinner date was a no-go, The Boy and I went with her.
Authentic Indian cuisine. The restaurant was recommended to her by her calculus instructor, who is himself Indian, so we figured it was a good bet.
We started with some sweet corn soup (right) and paneer pakora (left). The latter was homemade cottage cheese, according to the menu.
Since I can’t eat very much at one sitting, and since I’d already had some hearty soup I’d made, I didn’t order anything and opted to just sample whatever the kids ordered. The Boy, who is not a vegetarian, ordered chicken saagwala.
For my sister the vegetarian, the menu was a bonanza of available items. She choose aloo palak (potatoes and spinach). We also ordered some naan (at the right), as they both chose rice to go with their dinners. We had also ordered a sweet lassi (upper left) so they could taste it.
Both look exactly the same due to the spinach in the dishes. I don’t want to say that they didn’t look appetizing, but it’s not as if they were jumping up and down with an “eat me” sign blaring away. Still, everything was tasty, and the kids seemed to enjoy everything. I suspect The Boy was less enamored of the food than my sister, even though he did like the chicken.
Before we went on our Indian excursion, Mom, The Boy, and I had gone to look at a piece of property, just down the road a bit from the original piece of property that we wanted. The agent listing it said there was a “livable doublewide” on the property. Now, we’re not particularly interested in that, and would have it yanked off the land anyway, but when we reached the property, we wondered just how long it had been since the agent had been there, since the structure was in no way “livable”.
The property is just under 3.5 acres and is overgrown. View to the front of the property, toward the road.
Turning around from that same spot, a view of this “livable” trailer.
We started out around 4 PM to go see the property, but by the time we made a long detour around downed power lines on the main road, it was after 5 PM, and the sun was beginning to sink.
Whoever lived on the property last left behind quite a few things. From old Coke bottles that some collector would probably love…
…to some split and cured firewood (which would have been nice to use to start a fire, as it was getting chilly)…
…to an old saw…
…to a camera that would pique the interest of those who collect such things…
…to an old piano that has seen much better days.
I wonder what sort of tunes someone played on this? Finding views like this makes me think about searching out other old, abandoned places and finding out what’s there.
A view into the neighbor’s property. It was a stunner of a day: chilly, with a piercing blue sky settling into dusk.
The light was fading fast, and we needed to work our way back through the overgrowth to see what else could be seen. One thing was apparently a workshop or shed of some sort, overtaken by the brush.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
Always liked Robert Frost. Anyhow, we met up with a guy from the property next door, who heard us talking – a good thing, since he had a pretty high powered rifle on him, and we could hear doves in the air. Since the growth was too severe for us to make our way further back on the property, he kindly invited us to walk down his property to the back end of the property line and cut through the preserve to an entrance on the property at which we were looking. This tree was one whose branches we could see had been used for target practice.
The sun was dropping further from the sky…
…but still illuminated the trail on the preserve for us.
We found parts of the land that had apparently been cleared at some point but which were now tangled with grass and brush.
And were amazed at how brilliant and sharp things were against the sky.
But finally, it was time to go, as the light continued to fade.
It has potential: it’s far enough out to be in the country, but not so far out that people would refuse to visit. It’s large enough to have elbow room for us and from the neighbors, but not so vast that it is unmanageable.
It’s definitely a possibility.
Football Sunday
Hey, did you hear that?
Sunday. Two weeks before the Superbowl. The NFC and AFC Championship games. A good day for some food, family, and friends, alliteratively speaking.
In the wee hours, as I was doing some work, I got a head start on a batch of roasted red pepper soup. By roasting some peppers, of course.
Those got to hang out while I got some sleep, but when I got up, the cooking began in earnest. Finished up the soup…
…made the guacamole so we’d have it by the time the first game started…
…and then started chopping up various vegetables (leeks, red and yellow onions, carrots, celery, garlic)…
…and even more vegetables (cabbage and bok choy)…
…for the spring rolls, some of which would also have shrimp.
I also started some vegetable stock, for my sister the converted vegetarian.
All the spring roll vegetables got a quick saute.
And then a wrap in rice paper.
Shrimp spring roll.
Waiting patiently for dinner.
We also had steamed cauliflower and broccoli.
And mango-mustard glazed chicken.
With the extra sauce from the chicken on the side, cheese sauce made by my sister, and a dipping sauce for the spring rolls (made by yours truly), it was time to eat.
It was also time to watch the very exciting late game, with the Colts and Patriots duking it out. For awhile, it looked like the Pats were headed to another big game, but the Colts pulled it out. We’ll see how they do in two weeks, and if the Bears can make a game of it.
Let there be fried goodness
May I have…
…your attention…
…please.
Thanks.
I haven’t eaten tempura in quite a long time – since before I went in for surgery to remove the tumor that had latched on to my tongue. On Friday, I made an offhand remark to my mom and sister that we should have tempura Saturday evening. At home, of course. I’m a huge fan of tempura. When I would go out for sushi, my first course would always be tempura at Yoshi’s: vegetables and shrimp, in a convenient size that would not fill me up to the point where I couldn’t then stuff my face with a few rolls.
These days, I can’t eat as much in one sitting as I used to, no doubt due to that whole eating through a tube thing for a year. Still, I can eat small portions, and tempura is perfect for that.
I decided on a variety of vegetables: fresh green beans, sweet onions, peppers, mushrooms.
Some zucchini.
And sweet potatoes.
There needed to be some protein in there as well, so I added some shrimp.
I’ve never made tempura at home before. I suppose it was always much easier to just go out to eat it. but I have to say that the process is not that difficult (if you handle the batter properly, and have all the mise en place set up), and the rewards are excellent.
The one thing you can’t do when cooking this is walk away. Line up the food, the flour, the batter, the oil, and keep the assembly line going.
The food goes in the oil for a very short time – after all, we’re not frying it to death here.
A quick rest on a rack was all that was needed. We ate it almost as fast as it came out of the oil, with a typical dipping sauce – minus the dashi, which we couldn’t find anywhere in this town. I hear the Internet ordering calling my name for that.
We’ll be doing this again for Superbowl Sunday in a couple of weeks. Interested in some tempura goodness? Drop on by.