Leftovers (part I)

The first weekend (my first, back from vacation), I went totally hog wild and bought far too many fresh vegetables, and a small chicken. I roasted the chicken a la Nigel Slater. It was fantastic - but I obviously could not eat even a small chicken in one sitting.

(slight aside: his book, Appetite, is one of my all time favorite cookbooks. Anne Fadiman wrote an essay in her book, Ex Libris, click here for a review titled “Never Do That to a Book” in which she broke bibliophiles into two categories: courtly lovers and carnal lovers. Since reading it, I have at unexpected moments found myself making the same division. Nigel Slater is a carnal lover of food. I am a courtly lover of books, but a carnal lover of food.).

This past weekend, in an ineffective attempt to rein in my buying impulses, I brought a shopping list:

• Arugula
• Swiss Chard
• Leeks

Items not on the list, but bought nonetheless was:

• Eggplant (they just looked soooo good)
• Zucchini (but, they go so well with eggplant)
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Tarragon
• Peaches
  

Sigh. Of the items that I bought, only a third had been my intention.

I began with an omelet – must keep up my strength for the cooking ahead – and then, having realized once I got home that if I didn’t cook some of the vegetables immediately, they’d go soft and unpleasant before I did, I grilled them on my George Foreman grill (My apartment does not permit gas or coal grills, and the Foreman works very well for vegetables. And “Panini”)

Then I moved on to other things.

Heat

It has been (or so the radio tells me) seven straight days where it has reached over 90˚F. Blech. So yesterday seemed like the perfect time to go see a movie (gasp, on a work night!). This is the first movie I’ve seen since Christmas.

There are a lot of fun movies out or coming out soon that I’ve heard good things about – which of these brought me to the theater?

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

I enjoyed it – most particularly Guillermo del Toro’s fantastic imagination, and his horrifying re-interpretation of tooth-fairies and the bizarrely-eyed seer beneath Ireland. Nonetheless, I think that the first movie (excellent) was the better film. There was more tension between characters, more for the viewer to figure out on their own, and less certainty that the right people would all win out in the end. In short, I think the first film was the smarter of the two.

Nonetheless, I consider it money well spent.

Okay. I’m back now

I think.

It took longer than I expected (which is no great surprise, as the inner me often expects the unreasonable) to get back into the swing of my “real” life and catch-up with all the little chores that keep life moving smoothly and cleanly.

As dearly as I loved eating on my vacation (oh, seafood!), I’ve missed eating more lightly and cooking. Saturday I went to the Farmer’s market before temperatures crested 90˚F and collected some fresh produce.

Despite a list, I still bought more than I can rationally expect to eat in a week and I spent much of the weekend cooking.

Bliss.

I also started going through my vacation photos. I think that I may end up spending as much time going through them as I did actually on vacation. I also wish that I’d spent the time I’d intended playing with my new camera before I left. Then again, I suppose that I would never have immersed myself in playing with it the way that I did while I was away, so it may be just as well. …

I took over 1200 photos. Oh, the painful lesson of a digital camera and a big memory card …

(confession: I’m actually really enjoying going through all these photos ..)

I'm back!

I arrived back at home at about 2 am Tuesday morning and returned to work on Wednesday. I heard some bad news about a good friend, and with jet lag and another bridal shower this weekend and still not being unpacked, it may take a little bit before any details of my trip get typed in – or photos sorted through.

I will say that I had a fantastic time.

And ate, really, an embarrassment of oysters.

So I’m craving light food now. Specifically lots and lots of vegetables. Dinner tonight was stolen from Eric Ripert: broiled zucchini slices topped with hard cheese (again with the Prima Donna) and drizzled with a basalmic glaze. Tasty!

Tasty! I had it with a glass of Cavit Riesling, which I’m discovering that I like quite a lot.

*Prima Donna is a mild cow's milk cheese made in the style of a Dutch Gouda. As compared to a four- or six-year Gouda, Prima Donna has a distinctly softer, subtler flavor. It has an ivory rind with slight rose blush; bright, crunchy texture; and sweet, nutty flavor with a distinct caramel aftertaste. Pair Prima Donna with bigger reds such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Zinfandel.

Gazpacho

I started the famous Gazpacho last night, as you can see from the photo. Immortalized in digital format, one can see what work I’m willing to give myself to play around with taking pictures – the recipe simply calls for mixing all the ingredients together. Look at all those extra dishes. Clearly the honeymoon is still on for the camera.


I thought I’d keep with the recipe – but didn’t include the thyme (I forgot) and used a purchased balsamic glaze instead of making my own (I already had it)

After marinating overnight, running through the blender and sieve, I had it for dinner with a George Foreman ‘panini’ made with some remaining tomato, pesto, and mozzarella.


Yowza Yum!


And oh so easy ....

Next week: VACATION!

And next Friday I’ll float away on vacation...

This weekend I’m going to be trying to both run around madly trying to prepare for my vacation next week (Oregon and Washington) and relax and feel better rested. Two somewhat incompatible goals, entirely within character for me.

Preparing for my vacation means some shopping, laundry, cleaning the apartment for my return, packing, the fun of making some incipient plans for what I intend to do, and playing around with my camera so that I have a better idea of what I am doing when I’m away.

Not that I haven’t been playing around with it just about daily, but I’ll confess to doing mostly fun play, and not the constructive play that will help me learn more about its features.

Relaxing and feeling better rested … I’ll confess to not having many energized and well-rested feeling days this year. This is, I think, my own damn fault. I burned myself out with the marathon last year and have totally slacked off on getting regular exercise. I’ve also been greedy with my evening classes this year (watercolor and pottery) – which I’ve enjoyed immensely but they have meant more late nights and less “me” time. But I think this term has been fairly proouctive

So my aim in relaxing and feeling better rested is to go to bed early, sleep in, exercise some, and spend some quiet time reading and in introspection. And making some gazpacho from The French Laundry cookbook which I’ve borrowed from the library, inspired by the French Laundry at Home blog.

And thinking about my resolutions. I need goals.

Father's Day

Last weekend I drove up to Boston for Father’s day. For Mother’s day, K (my brother) and I helped my parents sort through and clean out the attic. I persuaded Mom that it made more sense to move the garage sale stuff down to the garage on Father’s day, closer to when the garage sale would be held, so that the basement would remain at least partially navigable. So K and I spent most of Saturday setting up the garage for the garage sale and cleaning out the attic and basement and I gave myself a blister vacuuming out K’s car (and my own).

My Dad has a moderately well-sized collection of slides taken during his various travels – including his trip around the world before he married my Mom (I should say just before – he proposed and went on this months-long trip leaving Mom wondering if they really were getting married. Before you think this is callous, I’ll point out that mom went on a two-week trip to Greece before their wedding without him so she was hardly pining). He’s been looking into ways to make these slides digital and is hoping to find something satisfactory that he can do at home somewhat cheaper than sending them all out. So we did some experiments with my taking pictures with my new camera of the slides projected on a wall:

This was taken when many Japanese women still wore kimono – looking at this picture temporarily gives me a very different perception of time.

While not perfect, I think it does a reasonably good job and can be done relatively quickly for free. He’s going to think about it.



Sunday we met K and his girlfriend KH at Mary Cheung’s, our favorite place for Dim Sum. Naturally I brought my new camera, and KH has recently resolved to take a picture a day so there was a lot of snapping of pictures.

Curiously enough, A, the boy I went to the Prom with, whose parents still live down the street from mine, was at the next table with K’s best friend from High school. It’s a small world, where you grew up.