Last night we just heatd up the PPI Seafood pasta from Sunday night and went to bed early.
Today Suzette had a 5:30 p.m. appointment and was due home late and Willy stayed at home sick with something like the flu, so I did not feel like cooking a big meal and asked Suzette to bring home a roasted chicken. We often eat a chicken roasted at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery on Wednesdays because I go to meditation and cannot cook dinner.
Today Suzette had a 5:30 p.m. appointment and was due home late and Willy stayed at home sick with something like the flu, so I did not feel like cooking a big meal and asked Suzette to bring home a roasted chicken. We often eat a chicken roasted at the Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery on Wednesdays because I go to meditation and cannot cook dinner.
This
Wednesday I was separated from my meditation cushions due to the truck being in
the shop, so I did not meditate. Suzette
said she would not be home until around 7:30 p.m., so after riding ten miles I
sat with Willy and watched part of “Bourne Supremacy” until around 6:30 p.m.
when I thought about making a tomato cous cous for the chicken. When I went to the fridge I saw that we had
PPI boiled rice, so I decided to make Mediterranean fried rice using fresh
sugar snap peas, tomatoes and beautiful parsley and baby green onions, a sort
of Green Rice.
So at around
7:00 p.m., I chopped up one Roma tomato and about 1/2 cup of Italian broadleaf parsley,
sliced two small green onions and de-stemmed 2 cups of sugar snap peas. I put the parsley, onion and tomato in one
bowl and the sugar snap peas in another bowl.
I cut two
pieces of baguette and put them in aluminum foil and then into a 350˚ oven at
around 7:15p.m.
Suzette
arrived right at 7:30 p.m. carrying a freshly roasted chicken roasted with fresh
tarragon that she had picked from her garden at the Center for Ageless Living in
Los Lunas in the afternoon.
After she
checked Willy’s condition and determined that he had a fever of 104˚ and we discussed
what could be done to assist his recovery for a few minutes, I went to the
kitchen and put two tsp. of butter and 1 Tbsp. of California extra virgin olive
oil from Trader Joe’s (new crop $5.99) into a large skillet and heated it and
Suzette came in and took over the skillet while I ran to the basement to fetch
a bottle of La Montanana Spanish Viura wine($4.99 Trader Joe’s), which I like
with chicken. Then I heated the chicken
in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes to warm it.
Suzette put
the 1 pint container of rice into the skillet and then the parsley, onion and
tomatoes and sautéed them for about ten minutes, while I steamed the sugar snap
peas for 8 minutes until they were soft.
Then Suzette put the sugar snap peas into the skillet with the rice and
other vegetables and tossed them to coat them with the oil and butter and to
mix their flavors for another two minutes.
Then we were ready to eat, so I uncorked the wine and poured glasses of
it. Then I separated the thigh quarters from
the chicken and put one on each plate and we each served ourselves the rice and
vegetable medley. The color combination
of white rice, red tomato and green parsley and green onion was lovely.
The roasted tarragon
chicken was delicious because we did not have to prep and cook it, although it was a small bird and a little tough and the wine
was a little oxidized, so the meal was not completely enjoyable; perhaps
also because we were worried about Willy’s condition.
I had heated
one of the pieces of baguette for Willy, but he was too sick to eat anything. We discussed that if his temperature did not
improve by tomorrow I would take him to be examined by a doctor.
Recently I have
seen the "New York Times" writer named Morris being interviewed on T.V. several times
discussing his new book, titled Salt, Fat, Sugar, so now I am
trying to wean myself from sugar and fat and salt. This will invariably alter my consumption of
candy and may alter the trajectory of my cooking, for which I apologize in
advance to those who enjoy those ingredients, but hopefully please those who have
also become mindful of the deleterious effect of those ingredients in large
quantities on our health.
Morris’ strongest
criticism seems to be targeted at the prepared food industry that puts harmful
amounts of these ingredients into many prepared foods because they are cheaper
than other ingredients and have a tendency to get us addicted to them. His stories about food companies’ experiments
to see what quantities will taste the best and make us want to eat more of the
their fat, sweetened and salty foods are chilling.
I like to
think that the way we cook bypasses most of the prepared food industries’
products. For example, we debated at Costco the other day whether to buy a jar
of sundried tomatoes, mainly because it was priced at $8.75, but also because
it was a prepared food.
It is our intent
to eat homemade, fresh healthy food and, which is really possible in the summer
when we cook with fresh ingredients harvested from our garden.
Last
Saturday we planted oriental turnips, radishes, mustard greens, and radicchio in
two of our raised beds and covered them with plastic sheeting. Then on Monday evening we planted one of our
8 triangles in the old garden with two types of peas and covered it with
plastic. We have also started watering
our yard and gardens, so the miracle of growing our own fresh food will start
soon.
Only a few signs
of growth so far (a sprig of wintered over parsley and fennel), but every day we go out
to the patch of asparagus we planted last year to look for new sprouts.
Suzette says
her tarragon is already a foot high in Los Lunas, thus the fresh herbed chicken
tonight; so hopefully there will soon be many lovely meals cooked with our
fresh ingredients to write about.
Bon Appétit
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