The Art of Destroying a Kitchen

Or... How Many Pots and Plates Does it Take to Cook Dinner?!?

In tonight's case, it would be a lot.

Tonight's vaguely-Mexican dinner concept started with a recipe in Today's Diet and Nutrition magazine for Crispy Black Bean-Rice Cakes.  I've been looking at the recipe for a week, now, thinking I wanted to try it.  The opportunity presented itself, today.

I did a modified version of my Monday shopping, today.  I just wasn't in the mood to shop, be in public, deal with people.  Sleep has not been kind to either of us the past few days, and it's not as if I'm actually cranky, or anything, but have you ever been in one of those "Get off your %$#@& cell phone and get your  %$#@& shopping cart out of my %$#@& way before I break it over your %$#@&  head" moods?!?  That was me.  Mr Pleasant-to-be-around.  In person.

I was at the store and absolutely nothing looked good.  I was going through the motions, but nothing was saying "take me home".   And then I happened to see a small brisket.  I started thinking about those rice and bean cakes.  Chile peppers, capsaisin, and maybe I should just try burning this crud out of us.  A recipe was born!

Hot and Sweet and Spicy Brisket

• 1 small brisket
• 2 nectarines, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• 1 onion, quartered
• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 chipotle chiles in adobo, minced
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp Mexican oregano
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 btl BBQ sauce (without high fructose corn syrup.  Read your labels!)

Preheat oven to 250°.  Place brisket fat-side up into an oven-safe pan, add seasonings, peppers, onions, nectarines, etc.  Top with BBQ sauce.

Cover with foil and bake about 4 hours.

Remove beef from pan and place pan juices (there are a lot of them!) and everything else into a sauce pan.  Use an immersion blender to puree everything into a slightly thick, smooth sauce.

When ready to serve, shred brisket with 2 forks.  Add desired amount of sauce, mix well, and enjoy.

Okay...  That was the original 8x8 pyrex dish I cooked the brisket in, the pot of sauce, the bowl I shredded into and mixed with the sauce - and the serving plate.  One item.  I'm on a roll.

And then I made:

Crispy Black Bean-Rice Cakes

• 2 cups well drained black beans
• 3/4 cup cooked jasmine rice
• 1/2 cup finely chopped red onions
• 1 jalapeno pepper, minced
• 1/2 bunch scallions, the white part and a bit of the green finely mined
• leaves from 1/4 bunch of cilantro, finely minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 to 2 tablespoons olive oil
• fresh salsa

Put half of the rice and beans in a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Do the same with the rest of the beans and rice.   Combine the onion, chili, scallions, cilantro,salt, and pepper in large bowl. Add the beans and rice and mix thoroughly.  Or you can just add the whole beans and rice to the bowl and mash it with a potato masher.

To cook the cakes, scoop out with 1/2 cup measures and using wet hands, pat out into a patty about 3/4 inch thick and 3 inches in diameter.  Using a heavy skillet or griddle, heat the oil over medium heat until it sizzles and add the cakes.  When the bottoms are nice and crispy, turn them gently and cook  on the other side until crispy.  It should take about 5-6 minutes in all. Serve with salsa or sour cream.

I used canned black beans, which saved a pot, but cooked the rice - 1 pot, and broke out the food processor, plus the bowl for mixing everything, and the skillet for frying them.  Oh - and the plate to put them on before they were cooked and the serving plate.

And because I had tomatillos in the veg bin from last week that needed to be used, I made:

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

• 6 tomatillos
• 2 serrano chiles
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• 1 tsp salt

Remove husks and rinse under warm water to remove stickiness.  Place everything (except cilantro) on a broiler-proof pan.  Broil until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, 7 to 10 minutes.  Place everything into bowl of food processor - including cilantro - and chop well.  Chill.

Roasting pan, bowl of food processor (again), cooling bowl and serving bowl.  I'm doing good.

I had 5 small glass bowls with the condiments - sour cream, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, guacamole, and the tomatillo salsa.

I reused the pan I cooked the rice and bean cakes to heat my corn tortillas.  Victor likes flour tortillas - they needed nothing.

A simple dinner for two.  The dishwasher is full.

I'm ready for bed.

by Tim Dineen

Feed A Cold...

Yes, we're still eating, and yes, we still feel like crapola.  When I'm not hacking up the right lung, I'm hacking up the left.

Sorry...  It doesn't paint a pretty picture.  Did I mention I feel like hell?!?

So... other than having zero energy, coughing like there's no tomorrow, and wanting to do nothing other than crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head, we're doing okay.  There's plenty of food and beverage in the house.  We're eating well, I'm just not interested in writing about it.  (Our appetites haven't completely abated, alas...)

The good thing about this particular brand of crud is we both still have a sense of smell - and taste buds!  Thank goodness.  Not having a lot of motivation to go into the kitchen in the first place would really suck if we couldn't taste what we're not overly-motivated to make.

Friday night was a casserole of sorts.  I had taken some ground beef out of the freezer, thinking tacos, tomatillo salsa - vaguely-Mexican.  That morphed into a beef and mushroom casserole with a mashed potato topping.  I needed comfort food.

Last night, I was feeling even lazier.  The pork chops I had taken from the freezer stayed in the 'fridge.  We had frozen Mandarin Orange Chicken over rice.  I doctored the sauce with sambal olek and cut up a really big green pepper and roasted it with the chicken.  But dinner, basically, came out of a bag.  Oh well.

Tonight, Victor took to the kitchen.  He had slightly more energy than I and started off by making a pasta salad this afternoon.  More tomatoes on the vine, so a quick tomato salad was born, and another dozen plum tomatoes are in the oven drying.

And then those pork chops from yesterday.  Seems what we thought were two thin--sliced chops was actually four really thin-sliced chops.  Perfect.  It made chewing easier.  Have I mentioned I have zero energy?!?  Fortunately, these pork chops gave me the incentive to keep eating!  Yum, they were!

VERY quickly browned in a skillet and then into the oven with a red onion, pear, and nectarine.  It was the ten-minute version of a really good recipe from Lidia Bastianich that we make all the time.

So... feeling marginally better.  I'm sure tomorrow will be even better, still.  I did have the laptop out in the back yard all day.  The weather was perfect and tomorrow should be mid 70's and no humidity.  Perfect.

by Tim Dineen

Chicken Soup for the Soul

It's official.  The PlaneCrud I have been fighting all week has taken hold.  Victor succumed to it a couple of days ago.   I fought.  I really did.  But in the end, it was too much for me.  It's settled in the chest.  I'm hacking away.

Oh, glorious day.

I suppose I could go to the dugstore and buy any number of really expensive cold remedies, but the only thing they're really guaranteed to do is to extract money from my checking account.  I'm still going to feel like hell, but $40.00 poorer.  No thanks.

Time for Mom's Cure - Chicken Soup.

I'm a product of the '50s... Doctor's made House Calls (can you imagine?!?), medicine was expensive (even back then), and chicken was sold with bones.  We didn't eat a lot of chicken - in those  pre-factory-farming days,  chicken was expensive - but when we had colds, chicken soup was an automatic.  Looking back, more of it probably came out of a ten for a dollar Lady Lee can than a simmering carcass, but those simmering carcasses did make appearances now and again.  Mom made really good soups.

So we fast-forward 50+ years and I have a $13.00 organic, free-range whole chicken (I'd rather pay more money than support those factory farms) ready to go into the pot.  It's a good-sized bird, so I decide to cut it in half and make a smaller batch of soup and freeze half for later use.  I may feel like hell, but I'm still thinking portion control.

Into the pot went a splash of olive oil, then half an onion, diced.  After it had wilted a bit, I added the chicken and a couple cloves of chopped garlic.  About a cup of white wine and then 2 quarts of chicken broth (also organic, free range.  One must be consistant).

I let the chicken cook about an hour, then pulled it out of the pot, added 3 diced carrots (unpeeled), 3 stalks of celery, diced, and a hefty handful of fresh green beans, trimmed and sliced.

A bit of salt and pepper, a pinch of poultry seasoning (Mom always used poultry seasoning) and finally, homemade fettuccine noodles.  (I didn't make them, I bought them.)

I shredded the chicken, added it to the pot, and dinner was served.

And speaking of Mom...

It was sixty years ago this morning, that she gave birth to my big brother, Mike, at French Hospital in San Francisco.

Happy Birthday, Mike!  After all these years, it's finally better being the younger brother!

LY!

And I'm thinking that this may be an early-to-bed night.

Hurry up and get dark!

by Tim Dineen

Two for the Price of One

Okay... when was the last time you had Iceberg Lettuce?  Be honest, now...  didn't you just love that crunch?!?  One of life's guilty little pleasures, for sure.

So last night, we had some iceberg lettuce.  I really like spring mixes and baby lettuce blends, spinach and the like, but every now and again, the crunch of some iceberg is what I want.  I do have to admit that I chopped up a bit of radicchio to mix in with it - old habits die hard.  But the star of this salad wasn't the grilled-to-perfection chicken breast, the paper-thin slices of radish, the Greek feta, the perfectly ripe nectarine, the toasted walnuts, or the homegrown tomatoes - or even that crunch lettuce.  No, the star of this salad was the Roasted Onion and Walnut Salad Dressing!

Roasted Onion and Walnut Dressing

• 1 large (or two medium) onion(s)
• drizzle olive oil
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 3 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 400°.  Peel and quarter onion and place in oven-proof pan or plate.  Sprikle sugar over onion and drizzle with a dab of olive oil.

Roast in oven about 30 minutes. After about 15 minutes, add walnuts.

Remove from oven and place everything in blender.  (The onion should have released some juices plus the sugar makes a bit of a syrup.)

Puree onion mixture.  Add vinegar and continue mixing.

Drizzle in olive oil.

Taste, and add salt and pepper, as desired.

Serve warm or cold, as desired.

This was a good one!  Really simple, yet really flavorful.  It really worked well with the chicken and iceberg lettuce but would be equally at home on a roast beef sandwich.  The concept came from Bon Appetit with a lot of changes from moi.

A definite keeper.

And then we have tonight's dinner...

I had a pork tenderloin and had originally planned to cook it up and make more salads.  At the last minute I decided I wanted pork scallops!

I sliced the tenderloin into small slices and pounded them quickly with a mallet.  Into a skillet they went with a drizzle of olive oil.

I pulled them out as they cooked and then added a teaspoon of butter to the same pan and a large handful of assorted mixed mushrooms.  I sauteed them, added a splash of white wine to deglaze the pan, added a bit of chicken broth, and then thickend it all with a bit of cornstarch.  The pork scallops went back into the pan to heat through,.

In the meantime, I cooked up a half-cup of brown, mahogany, and wild rice and a bunch of broccolini to finish the plate.  Dinner was ready in the 45 minutes it took to cook the rice.

Yum.

We can have salads again tomorrow.

by Tim Dineen

Cranberry Beans, Chorizo, and a Pork Chop

On my Monday Gentile's run, I found the first of the end-of-summer cranberry beans.  Creamy and nutty, they're good on their own, or mixed in as an ingredient with other things.  Tonight, they played a supporting role.

A while later at the grocery store, I found fresh chorizo.  Unusual, because usually it's cured.  I picked up a package, not knowing what it was I was going to do, but knowing that I wasn't going to pass up fresh chorizo.  iPhone in hand, I typed in Chorizo into my Epicurious App and several hundred recipes showed up.  I scanned the first few in the store, realized I had ingredients already for any number of dishes, and continued on.  (And to think, I fought this technology for years!)

I found one recipe that had a lot of what I was looking for, but a lot more than I wanted.

Grilled Pork Chops with Clams and Chorizo

Gourmet | October 2006

Clams and pork are a classic Portuguese combination. The briny sweetness of the bivalves and a tomato sauce studded with zesty chorizo bring out the richness of the chops.

Yield: Makes 4 (main course) servings
Active Time: 1 1/2 hr
Total Time: 1 3/4 hr

Ingredients

• 2 medium heads garlic
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 Turkish or 1 1/2 California bay leaves
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped (1 cup)
• 1 medium carrot, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
• 1 celery rib, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
• 2 oz Spanish chorizo (cured spiced pork sausage), casing removed and sausage finely chopped (1/3 cup)
• 1/2 cup drained canned diced tomatoes (from a 14 1/2-oz can)
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 3 whole cloves
• 3/4 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2/3 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth (8 fl oz)
• 24 small hard-shelled clams such as littlenecks (less than 2 inches in diameter), shucked, reserving 2/3 cup juices
• Vegetable oil for oiling grill
• 4 (1-inch-thick) bone-in rib pork chops
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Special equipment: an instant-read thermometer

Preparation

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 400°F.

Cut 1/4 inch off tops of garlic heads and put heads, cut sides up, on a sheet of foil. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and wrap tightly in foil, then roast in oven until garlic is soft when pierced with tip of a knife, about 45 minutes.

While garlic roasts, heat remaining 1/4 cup olive oil in a 3- to 4-quart heavy pot over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking. Add bay leaves and cook, stirring, until leaves begin to brown, about 10 seconds. Reduce heat to moderate, then add onion, carrot, celery, and chorizo and cook, stirring occasionally, 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato paste, cloves, red-pepper flakes, and black pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, 6 to 8 minutes. Add wine and bring to a boil, then add broth and reserved clam juice. Simmer, uncovered, until reduced to about 2 cups, about 15 minutes.

While tomato sauce simmers, squeeze pulp from garlic cloves and force through a medium-mesh sieve into a bowl using a rubber spatula, discarding solids. Whisk purée into tomato sauce. Discard bay leaves and cloves, then keep sauce warm while grilling chops.

Prepare grill for cooking. If using a charcoal grill, open vents on bottom of grill, then light charcoal. Charcoal fire is medium-hot when you can hold your hand 5 inches above grill rack for 3 to 4 seconds. If using a gas grill, preheat burners on high, covered, 10 minutes, then reduce heat to moderate.

Pat pork chops dry and sprinkle on both sides with salt. Grill pork chops on lightly oiled grill rack, covered only if using a gas grill, turning over once, until thermometer inserted 2 inches into center of a chop (do not touch bone) registers 145°F, 12 to 14 minutes total. Transfer chops to a plate and keep warm, loosely covered with foil.

Add clams to sauce and cook just until clams plump and edges begin to curl, 30 to 45 seconds. Stir parsley into sauce along with any meat juices accumulated on plate.

Serve chops topped with clams and sauce.

Cook's note:
If you aren't able to grill outdoors, chops can be grilled in a hot, lightly oiled, well-seasoned ridged grill pan over moderately high heat.

I didn't want the clams, my pork chops were thin and boneless, I didn't want to spend 45 minutes roasting garlic, and I wanted to use the cranberry beans...  It was a perfect recipe - to remake.

Tim's Version

• 2 cloves garlic - minced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 small carrot, finely chopped
• 1 celery rib, finely chopped (1/2 cup)
• 1 link fresh chorizo, casing removed, crumbled
• 1 fresh tomato, diced
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 cups cranberry beans, cooked
• 3 whole cloves
• 3/4 teaspoon dried hot red-pepper flakes
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup dry white wine

Heat oil in skillet.  Add bay leaves, then garlic, onion, celery, carrot, and chorizo.  Cook until sausage is done and vegetables tender.

Add tomatoes and tomato paste.  Cook a few minutes then add remaining ingredients.

Bring to a boil and then simmer about 15 minutes.

I cooked up a bit of Israeli Couscous to serve with it.  The pork chops - thin and boneless as I stated above - were pan-fried in a dry skillet for just a few minutes.

It was really flavorful - and took minutes compared to the hour and a half for the original recipe!

by Tim Dineen

Stuffed Chicken and Pasta Salad

Dinner tonight was a team effort.  While I was at work, Victor made a pasta salad.  A really good pasta salad.   Asparagus, celery, onions, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes from the garden, bell pepper, and a drizzle of basil oil Victor made before we went on vacation.  Perfection.

I took two chicken breasts and made a slit in each.  Into the pocket, I added a couple of slices of Greek feta, roasted red pepper, and slivered basil.  I sprinkled them with salt and coarse black pepper, garlic, and Greek oregano.  They were browned in a bit of olive oil, then into a 350° oven for about 20 minutes.

It came out pretty good, if I do say so, m'self!

I'm pleasantly pleased that I'm actually feeling full eating smaller portions.  That is not to say that I couldn't sit down and finish off the whole plate of pasta salad, because I could.  Easily.  But I am learning to pay attention and stop eating before I'm totally stuffed.  It is a good thing.

This morning, I dropped below 225 for the first time in a year.

Another good thing.  It's working.

35 to go.

by Tim Dineen

Burgers on the Barbie

It took me just short of forever to get the charcoal going tonight.  This humidity sucks. While I absolutely and totally and completely love the taste of food on a charcoal grill, I am really disliking little things like the dampness of the charcoal and the time it takes to get a fire going in this weather.  I went through half a newspaper with the charcoal chimney.  Bah.  Humbug.  I may have to rethink this come fall - or figure out a way to be able to go both gas and charcoal grilling...  Time to do some research, because I like to grill year-round.  This is not going to be an easy task when it's snowing!

In the meantime, the fire eventually started and I eventually cooked up a couple of burgers.  Pretty yummy burgers.  First off, they weren't the 1/2-3/4 pound burgers of yore.  They were respectable 5oz-ish burgers with minced garlic, onion, bell pepper and just a bit of bleu cheese mixed in.  Grilled to perfection, and them topped with mushrooms sauteed in a teaspoon of butter and finished with a splash of red wine.  I oven-roasted a sweet potato (I wasn't about to wait for the grill!) and since the oven was already on, steamed the cauliflower in the oven at the same time.

Simple.  And good.

We've both been doing really well, so as a reward tonight - we went out and got ice cream cones!  We brought Cybil and got her a bowl of vanilla - she loves her ice cream, as well.  The little kids were screaming with delight and all came over to pet her.  She was a hit.  And so was my ice cream cone.  And I was a good boy - I got a single scoop instead of my traditional double.

I'm working on it.......

by Tim Dineen

Pulled Pork Picadillo with Polenta

It's amazing what one can do with leftovers!  There was pulled pork in the 'fridge alng with about a quart and a half of a spicy chipotle and tomato sauce left from Tuesday's dinner. (It appears that I was remiss in posting that meal!)  They laid the foundation for tonight's meal.

I took 2 cups of the sauce, added a half-cup of polenta and a cup of corn.  Cooked for about 40 minutes.

In the meantime, I made the pulled pork picadillo.

Pulled Pork Picadillo

• 1/2 cup diced red onion
• 1/2 cup diced green pepper
• 2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 8 oz  pulled pork
• 1/3 cup raisins
• 1/3 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives, coarsely chopped
• salt and pepper, to taste

Saute onion, pepper, and garlic in a bit of oil.  Add spices and tomato paste.  Add diced tomatoes and heat through.  Add raisins, olives, and pork.  Heat through.  Add a bit of water to thin, if necessary.  Serve over polenta.

The picadillo could be used on or with anything - in tacos, burritos, empanadas - anything!

The only downside is that the polenta was pretty much a one-shot deal.  I'll never have the sauce again to make it.

Oh well.

And the pulled pork?!?  I made it Tuesday.  I bought a bone-in pork shoulder and simmered it for several hours with water, a bit of vinegar, onions, and chipotles.  After pulling out the pork, I added about 8 tomatoes I had frozen before vacation (peeled and chopped).  I cooked it all down, added some S&P and called it spicy-good!

Dinner was supposed to be burritos.  Alas, I tossed out the tortillas that were sitting in the 'fridge since before vacation and neglected to pick up more.  It became a lovely salad and the sauce - with a bit of apple cider vinegar and olive oil - became a great salad dressing!

by Tim Dineen

Bresaola Bundles

One of the goodies awaiting me when we got home was a copy of  La Cucina Italiana.  It's a great Italian food magazine with some excellent recipes.

One of the recipes I espied and thought sounded really good  was this:

Fagottini ripieni con mozzarella e pomodori

Fagottini means bundles in Italian, and these little ones are full of savory goodness: tomatoes, olives, pine nuts, and fresh mozzarella. Though they look stunning, making them is very straightforward. Just allow time to drain the tomatoes, a step that eliminates excess liquid while concentrating flavor.

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons pine nuts
• Fine sea salt
• 1 3/4 pounds tomatoes
• 1/3 cup Taggiasca olives, or other mild, fruity olives, pitted and roughly chopped
• 12 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil plus more for drizzling
• 1 1/2  tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil leaves
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 8 slices prosciutto, about 11 inches long
• 4 fresh chives or scallion greens
• 8 green-leaf lettuce leaves

Instructions

In a small skillet, toast pine nuts over very low heat, occasionally shaking pan back and forth, until nuts are lightly browned and fragrant, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
Bring saucepan of salted water to boil. Drop tomatoes into water and boil 30 seconds; drain, peel, seed and roughly chop.

Set a fine-mesh sieve over a large glass measure or container, then transfer tomato to sieve and let drain until liquid from tomatoes is separated from pulp, 3 to 5 hours, depending on juiciness of tomatoes. Discard juices or save for another use.

Set aside 1 tablespoon pine nuts and 1 tablespoon chopped olives for garnish. Tear cheese into small pieces; put pieces into a bowl. Add tomato pulp, remaining pine nuts, remaining olives, oil, basil and generous pinch pepper. Stir to combine.

Center 1 slice prosciutto over 1 ramekin; press prosciutto into edges of ramekin. Center a second slice over the first to make a cross; press second slice into edges of ramekin. Spoon a quarter of the cheese mixture into prepared ramekin, then pull up ends of prosciutto to create a sack. Gently tie together sack with 1 chive. Repeat with remaining prosciutto, cheese mixture and chives to make 4 fagottini.

Divide lettuce among 4 serving plates; drizzle with oil and season with pepper. Gently remove fagottini from ramekins and transfer onto the lettuce, garnish with reserved pine nuts and olives.

I really liked the concept, but I wasn't up to draining tomatoes for hours... and I needed thicker slices of prosciutto than we have.

Enter bresaola.

Bresaola is air-dried salted beef that has been aged about 2-3 months until it becomes hard and a dark red, almost purple color. It is made from eye of round and is lean and tender with a sweet, musty smell. It originated in Valtellina, a valley in the Alps of northern Italy's Lombardy region.

Since I changed the meat, I figured I could change the filling.  I minced up a carrot, a few cauliflower florettes, and a couple of mushrooms and sauteed them in a dab of olive oil, then a splash of balsamic vinegar and a splash of red wine.  I cooked it all down and then addd some shaved Locatelli.  While eating it tonight, we were thinking of a dozen different fillings.  Actually, I don't think there's anything that wouldn't work with this.

But I digress...

It went atop chopped romaine, with a bit of chicken breast on the side.  Victor made a honey mustarrd vinaigrette to drizzle over all.

It definitely fits into our return to reasonable consumption.  I gained back two pounds whilst eating our way through the Pacific Northwest.  Easy come.  Hard go.

There's definitely a few things I will do differently the next time I make something like this.  The first item is not adding the chicken.  Don't need it. (It was only a half-breast each, but still...)  And since the larder still isn't quite back to where it was before vacation, I didn't have a lot of peripherals, but a couple of radishes, maybe a sliced peach or nectarine... some mnore veggie-type things to dress up the plate.

As it is, I didn't finish it, but I can envision a few other goodies...

And made a bit smaller, they'd make a great first course...

by Tim Dineen

Sleepless in Seattle

So... No pictures of the lovely $7.00 boxed breakfast on the US Air flight, and no pictures of the really good Philly Cheesesteak sandwich from the great Italian deli here in Burien, but here's dinner last night at Bonnie and Nancy's!

Marinated tri tip on the grill, marinated salmon - also on the grill, an absolutely wonderful potato salad, and really fresh con on the cob.

Out of this world.

We sat outside on the deck and ate and laughed and ate some more.  DeeeLish!

All good things must come to an end, and our end was Apple Pie with homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream!  I could get used to this!

Today, we're off to play tourist in Seattle.  We're going to ride the new light rail that just opened, hit Pike Place Market, go to a place called Shorty's for lunch (and get Emily a t-shirt for her hubby) and hit the Sur La Table mothership.

Life is good!

by Tim Dineen