July 15, 2014 Lunch Chicken and Rice Soup Dinner Fried Flounder with Pineapple and Mango Salsa, Tartar Sauce and Fried Potatoes with greens

July 15, 2014 Lunch   Chicken and Rice Soup  Dinner   Fried Flounder with Pineapple and Mango Salsa, Tartar Sauce and Fried Potatoes with greens  

Breakfast was a quarter seeded cantaloupe with a handful full of granola in the cavity with the juice of ½ lemon squeezed on it and garnished with three or four Tbsps. of Trader Joe’s European yogurt.

It was a cool wet day so I fixed soup for lunch.  I cut up one of the PPI grilled red curry chicken thighs and about 2 Tbsps. of thinly sliced onion, three small carrots from the garden, about ½ cup of tofu cut into small cubes, a heaping Tbsp. of white miso, 2 smashed cloves of garlic, a PPI bag of 7 or eight large basil leaves sliced into strips, and 2/3 cup of PPI red curry flavored boiled rice into about five or six cups of water flavored with 1 tsp. of dehydrated chicken stock, to which I added a six or seven snow peas from the garden and a few leaves of purslane and a dash of Chinese cooking wine and ground cumin.  In about twenty minutes of simmering I had made four bowls of soup.  The PPI rice, which had been a little undercooked, puffed up and the kernels opened up and took on the flavor of the soup and tasted delicious.  The combination of Mediterranean and oriental ingredients was terrific.

I worked until 6:30, but Suzette and I discussed dinner hurriedly.  We had to cook the flounder filet we had bought at Pro’s on Sunday.  We discussed and rejected fish tacos, as well as my original idea of an elaborate Swedish baked dish, ”Fish Au Gratin”, with mashed potatoes and potatoes baked in a casserole with cheese, cream and butter (we decided to leave that dish for the winter). 

Finally Suzette said, “I will fry it. It can either be fried or baked.” 

I said, “Thanks.  Sounds great.” 

In another twenty minutes when I finished and sent off my document I went to the kitchen and found that Suzette had made a bowl of tartar sauce and a bowl of mango/pineapple salsa with onions and tomatoes and some of the pineapple I bought and sliced on Sunday and a mango also bought at Pro’s Ranch Market on Sunday.  Suzette had also chopped up a PPI baked potato and sautéed it in a skillet with some chopped onion and was ready to fry the fish with whipped egg in one pie plate and flour in another, ready to flour and batter the fish. 

Suzette asked, “What do you want to do about a green vegetable?”

I replied, “I could go to the garden and pick some chard.”

Suzette said, “Do it quickly.”

So I grabbed a basket and picked a handful of purslane leaves that have begun to grown again in the dirt in the driveway and beside the house and then went to the garden and picked some of the new young leaves of chard from a newly propagating crop in the garden.

I returned and de-stemmed the chard and we spun the chard and purslane to clean it and Suzette threw the handful of greens into the potato dish in the skillet and then battered and fried the flounder in about 1/3 inch of canola oil.  

Suzette had already taken care of the beverage selection also, by fetching two bottles of Negra Modelo from the garage and putting them into the freezer to chill.

After the fish was fried and laid on a piece of paper towel for a minute to soak up some of the grease, Suzette plated dinner plates with a pile of the sautéed potatoes, onions and greens and laid a fried flounder filet on the pile and we took our plates, the beers and bowls of tartar sauce and salsa to the Gazebo in the garden, where we added tartar sauce and mango/pineapple salsa to our plates for a very colorful dish of food.  

Starting with only a filet of thawed flounder and no idea, Suzette had created a beautiful and delicious dinner. Since the filet was large ($2.99/lb. at Pro's Ranch Market), so each ate a piece of fried fish and now had two pieces of PPI fried fish for another meal. 

As we sat in the garden in the sunny cool sunset of evening eating and watching the two fish chase each other in the pond, we concluded that we were all happy and enjoying the cool dry sunny evening.

The lesson from this evening’s meal is one can make a beautiful dinner with one meat ingredient, some PPI’s and random ingredients, a moderately productive garden and a little imagination.  

Bon Appétit