Unrelated Side Note

I got tied up at work, which meant I got home late, which meant dinner was going to be late. When I opened up the fridge, it was a sad sight and Matt was bellowing about wanting dinner. In case any of you ever wondered why I don’t want children …

So I set about making a simple dinner but wound up not finishing everything up until 6:15, not nearly enough time to pull myself together in time for yoga. At first, I was bummed, then I counted it as a blessing, since I’ve been feeling BLAH all day, and set forth to grocery shop and prep meals for the week.

So Matt hopped on the GS and headed off to the gym while I went food shopping, which totally relaxes me. Is that weird? I thought so, but I really don’t care.

I spent an hour gathering up a nice supply of staples and healthy treats (that Matt finds acceptable) and thinking of ways that Matt and I can be more resourceful moving forward with the purchase of a new home. We’ve always been very casual about going out to eat and drink but I know that our new mortgage payments, as well as our location, are going to limit us in that regard for a while.

So there I was, holding a block of cheese, dreaming up ways to be smarter with money and planning how to spend my nights and weekends in our new home. I was, in a word, domesticating. Doing all of those things that make Matt say, “Yuckers.” Again, if any of you ever wondered why I don’t want children …

When I got home, I went about cutting up meat for sandwiches, throwing the makings of Brown Rice and Chicken Congee* into the crock pot, cutting up and sorting fruit into grab-and-go packages, and divvying up large bags of snacks into smaller, lunch-ready bags. Matt came upstairs in search of a snack, opened the fridge, and said, “Wow. It’s awesome in here,” and he pulled out a single serving of hummus and carrots.

That’s the trick with Matt, you have to have things ready to eat. He’d rather drive ten minutes to a McDonald’s than put together his own snack. So, I had a productive, happy evening. I’m teaching two Spin classes tomorrow, so I’m glad I got food prepped ahead of time because I’m going to need it! Two classes is at least a 1,000-calorie burn for the day, not to mention the excess I’ll be shedding all day from having a hyped-up metabolism.

*Brown Rice and Chicken Congee – super healthy, super yummy, and super easy

Serves as many as you want it to serve. It doesn’t last long around here.

Say what you will about Asian fusion and modern, exotic cooking but nothing sends my spirits soaring like a five-course, classic, French Country dinner. Plus, there’s nothing a dinner like that can’t fix. Behold, my birthday dinner at Tersiguel’s on Main Street in Olde Ellicott City. Our table was by the window, just to the left of the door …

Let’s start things off right with a Kir Royale, Shall we? And, compliments of the chef, an amuse-bouche of local farm peaches, lightly fried and served with a dill aioli. The amuse-bouche is one of my favorite aspects of French country cooking.

Then, let’s follow up with the appetizer-for-two special: A glorious seafood delight of calamari with chiptole spiced aioli, mussels in curry coconut milk, little neck clams with chorizo in wine sauce, and shrimp in a butter garlic sauce. Add an entire head of roasted garlic squeezed onto house-made bread that was used to soak up the sauces and you have HEAVEN.

Third course (for me) is a chopped and artfully arranged heirloom tomato dressed in basil and served with house-made mozzarella and toasted cornbread croutons. I ate this in under a minute. Glorious summer dish.

Main course, a perfect Chesapeake summer entree, served in the classic French tradition: Softshell crab over sauteed rockfish, napped with a brown chicken broth and served with haricot verts, radishes, and roasted potatoes. The local produce attracted me to this dish and it was amazing. I paired this course with a glass of French Chardonnay. Lovely.

Would you like more bread? To soak up the remaining sauce? I can’t handle any more bread! I want dessert! A Napoleon Seasonnel of key lime curd and local blueberries. Accompanied by a Cockburn’s Ruby. It was the perfect finishing piece, and Matt pretty much had to roll me out of the restaurant.

Two days ago, I made this. I forgot to put the basil in, oops, used twice the amount of cheese, and used a baguette (that I got from BJs of all places, and it was fantastic) instead of a boule and did not remove the crusts. So here are my thoughts:

Matt ate some of it and Matt does NOT like tomatoes. I’m grateful that he is at least willing to try whatever I put on his plate though. He’s become much more open to food adventures since we’ve met and states, “Well, if you made it, chances are it will at least be good, even if it’s not my thing.”

God, I love my husband.

But back to the scalloped tomatoes. We both found it to be a bit too sweet right out of the oven, which made me a sad but I put in the fridge with the knowledge that most tomato-based dishes are better once they’ve sat for a day or two. Plus, I did not want my homegrown tomatoes to go to waste!

I pulled it out last night, reheated a portion in a small crock in the oven, and threw a fried egg on top. Deb recommends poached but I’m not a fan of super-runny yolks and I can better control that through frying. The result? Fantastic! So fantastic that I decided to make the same dish for breakfast this morning.

I asked Matt if he would like the same thing, and he was all about it as in he said, “Sure.” He ate all but a little bit of the tomatoes, which I happily wolfed down. Then I found myself sad that is was all gone! Then immediately found myself delighting in the fact that my new scallop/gratin dish was available for me to make this. Oh, Deb. It’s like you knew I bought a beautiful scallop/gratin dish this weekend (on ridiculous sale) and was looking for reasons to use it RIGHT NOW!

My final thoughts on the tomatoes? I can’t help but feel that the addition of basil would overpower and ruin the dish. It was so perfectly simple and rustic; a delightful peasant dish that made me feel as though I were enjoying a mid-week lunch on the terrace of my 100-year-old farmhouse in Provence.

If you have the means, make this dish. You won’t regret it.

Last night, I went mad grocery shopping. We’re talking STOCKED UP and I might have gone a bit nuts on the summer fruits. I can’t help it; I love them so. For example, I bought three pounds of strawberries because those bad boys were on sale. I stood in front of them and even said that out loud, “Damn, these strawberries are ridiculously ON SALE! I will make a pie.”

So I made a pie using two pounds of them. Matt walked up the stairs into the kitchen and said, “I SEE A PIE IN THE OOOOOOOOVEN!!!! Pie, pie, pie. I hope it’s strawberry. IT IS!” Obviously, Matt loves pie, and I loved the crust on this pie. It was the best I’ve ever made. Yum.

I also made bangers and mash* because I set my mind to, “I’m tired of not doing my thing in the kitchen because someone might come look at my house. Screw them, they can just look around me and see how well you can make this kitchen work.” I was buzzing about the kitchen blissed out for a solid hour quietly contemplating …

Twenty minutes for that. Okay, wash this. Ooo, stir that. Ten minutes? Okay, set. Roll the pie crust! Flip the sausages. Add some flour to the gravy! Ooops, the taters are boiling over. Wipe, wipe, wipe. Make the pie filling. Drink some water. Mash, mash, drain …

I think about nothing else but cooking while I’m cooking and I. Was. In. Heaven. It was the first real full-on meal I’ve prepared from scratch, start to finish, since I started painting the trim, what, two months ago, and it turned out splendidly. I’ve put years of practice into being able to make a ba-jillion things at once and have them come out at the same time while keeping my kitchen in order, and I will never cease to stand back and smile at a job well done before I scarf it all down and polish it off with something like a wet hop ale. Oh, and a piece of strawberry pie, of course.

Then I went for a three-mile swim, I mean run.

*The best compliment I’ve ever received in regard to my cooking was about my bangers and mash when Matt said, “You know how there are some things that you make you say, ‘like my mom makes it’? Well, this is bangers and mash like how my wife makes it.” Score.