What's For Dinner #72 - Wait, Summer Is Almost Over? Edition - August 2021

“The older you get, the faster time flies.”

My late mother always said that. I never understood until I was in my mid 40s. And now that I’m in my mid-60s, I understand all too well.

Treasure the time you have.
Relax.
Enjoy the time with your family and your friends.
Enjoy your food.

Life goes too fast, and you don’t want to be saying “Wait! I didn’t get to do this or that!”

So what are you enjoying this August?

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As for me today…

I really have to stop buying food when I go to the stupidmarket. I have SO much I can work from in my freezers, if only…

Technically, I have to remember to plan ahead and take something from the freezer in time to defrost for dinner.

I didn’t do that Friday night OR Saturday afternoon for yesterday or today, so a well-priced purchase at Market Basket of thick cut bone-in pork chops had me using one of the two purchased for dinner tonight.

Seared pork chop with a rosemary, red onion, and peach “sauce” patterned after the linked New Zealand link was dinner, along with toasted Israeli couscous and steamed green beans.

Wine? Yup.

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Husband has called a moratorium on “protein + veg+ starch” plates, complaining that he’s tired of meat and approaching tired of “food”. So for a week we’ve been having esoteric suppers, small plates. Continuing, tonight was artichoke frittata with side of Oaxacan stuffed squash blossoms. No pics, but clean plates.

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that pork chop though!!

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Marinated marbre steaks from our Frenchy butcher with beet greens I blanched, minced, and sauteed in olive oil & butter with shallots, garlic, dried chili flakes and tons of parm regg, in spaghetti - so good! love beet greens. and a green salad.

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I live beet greens too! Don’t eat them as often as I should.

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i wish BF would do the same. he’s very firmly in the pvs camp, always has been.

LOL. Our son told me he was brought up on “blue plate specials” which he explained as pvs. I never noticed but I guess so.

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I had thought I’d make a steak dinner tonight with one of the half ribeyes from the freezer.

But then I got sidetracked organizing and refilling spices (yes, that’s a thing - all my indian spices are in bulk quantities in airtight containers, and a couple of times a year I transfer some to medium containers for the more frequent restocking into my masala dabba). Which always makes me ponder who decided spices go “bad” after a few months? Not this stuff. Potent as ever.

Anyway. So when I got hungry, I wasn’t about to start cooking. I heated up the leftover chicken curry and rice, ate that, then finished clearing up my mess, and then heated up a samosa “kati roll” pocket from the freezer and made some buttermilk to go with. Tamarind-date chutney with the pocket too.

In other projects, I turned 5 lbs of unsalted butter into browned butter yesterday. It had been in the fridge the whole time I was away, and had that fridge taste, so I thought I could salvage it by converting it to ghee. Well, the ghee still had the taste, so I kept cooking it until it caramelized completely to see if the browning helped. It did, somewhat. I’ll be able to use it in baking at least - and glad not to have wasted it all. So now I have about 40-50oz of clarified browned butter in stock.

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ETA : Dessert - a piece of the chocolate bundt with some chocolate rum sauce.

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Saturday night I had a shrimp salad. Tonight boneless pork country ribs. Braised in beer with a big glug of KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce added after they were tender. Sides were doctored up Bush’s grillin’ beans and a salad of mixed greens, golden beets, Walla Walla sweet onion, sugar snap peas, bleu cheese, pistachios and honey mustard dressing.

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Returned for some shellfish, seafood and calamari as we were returning to Barcelona to prepare for a little trip via high speed rail on Thursday.




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Our first BLTs this summer! With a decent heirloom tomato on toasted brioche, TJ’s mayo, and very good sweet corn on the cob - and yes, definitely with TPSTOB. A little smoked salmon on mine, too. And there really was a nice hunk of crispy iceberg hiding under under the mater. BF’s kernels off the cob. Yum!

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Golden fried rice w/peas and red onion

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Tonight was leftover Sunday Sauce from Saturday. Tasted even better after sitting for two days! No pics.

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Nicoise salad and stuff.

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WFD was a big oops, and a “to hell with it” once I realized my blunder. So, I had 2 dinners planned. One was a corn salad with some smoked salmon on the side. The other was a BLT (or Cobbish - blt plus eggs and blue cheese) salad with a loaf of bread. I was doing prep for both along with my son. He was chopping stuff for the corn salad, I was washing lettuce for the salad salad. And then for some reason, I fried some bacon today. It was meant for the BLT salad and not the corn salad. But once I realized my mistake, I knew I couldn’t keep it overnight and maintain its crispness. So now I have a corn salad with bacon in it, and I can’t make a BLT salad and have bacon for dinner twice in a row. Well, I could, but… Once I realized that, I threw my tomato in too, into the corn, not needing it for the Nicoise I pivoted to for tomorrow. In addition to the broiled corn, bacon, and tomato, there was scallion, raw green bean, red bell pepper, basil, lime juice, and evoo. It was delicious and they demolished it. But it definitely had more ingredients than I had intended!
Ps - my helper is off to college in less than 3 weeks. :frowning: I am trying to make lots of his favorites before he goes.

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Here are the recovered pictures of the blackberry pie ( tasted good with TJ’s crust but it seems the crust is very fragile. Part of it fell as I took it out of the oven. Vivian Howard/s tomato pie with a twist ( I added turkey bacon ) some roasted poblano ( not visible)




and my Chinese version of Cucuzza stir fried with caramelized onions, garlic, garden purple bell peppers, tomato and chicken breast with some store bought Chinese rice crepes. ( not easily visible )

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I moved your meal from gardening to WFD. Great to see you active again in HO!

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Long time break from WFD, blue mood, family health issues, been lazy and not cooking a lot, also repetitive meals that I’ve made before in WFD.

Sunday: here’s h made some pizzas with the new cast iron oven, he has been bugging me to negotiate for space for this for 2 years after his Webers. His third time using it, he still tries to understand how the heat works, but is getting better handling the flame and not to get burnt dough.

Mozza, olive and anchovy

Tomato, mozza, onion confit in balsamic, topped with arugula and prosciutto

Focaccia

Yesterday dinner (no photo) was mussels in tomato basil sauce with red, green peppers, shallots, fresh garlic and habanero. Too hot for mister and he got mild stomach problem, I found it delicious.

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While I’m not a prepper (no 5 gal buckets of dehydrated food) I do get nervous when the freezer gets low. “Low” is more than a few inches below full. grin The impact of this philosophy is that about every six weeks, when we go to a warehouse store, everything comes out and gets organized with the newest on the bottom and the oldest on top. Meat on the left, veg on the right, prepared food in the middle, bread on the far right over the compressor.

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