March 13, 2021 Brunch - Egg and Sausage Burritos. Lunch - Tropical Fruit Salad with yogurt. Dinner - Cajun BBQ Shrimp over rice with Steamed Asparagus and corn bread

March 13, 2021 Brunch - Egg and Sausage Burritos. Lunch - Tropical Fruit Salad with yogurt. Dinner - Cajun BBQ Shrimp over rice with Steamed Asparagus and corn bread 

Today we started the day by meeting Cynthia and Ricardo at the new mural on the back wall of the El Rey theater.  It was fun seeing them and getting out of the house.  The mural was interesting. Over a dozen artists contributed to the murals.  Here are some photos of the wall and some of the murals.

When we returned home we decided to make sausage burritos.  I fetched the new carton of eggs and tube of Jimmie Dean sausage from the garage fridge.

I chopped some onion and Suzette cut the tube of sausage into three pieces.  She took about 1/4 lb. for the burrito and I wrapped the remaining pieces in Saran and returned two sections to the garage fridge.  I had bought fresh flour tortillas yesterday at El Super market, so we had fresh ingredients and the burrito was soft and incredibly delicious. We lay slices of Manchego cheese and sprinkled the top of the ingredients with Cholula sauce.  I poured glasses of Clamato and seasoned each with lime juice.  It was a lovely fresh meal.

After brunch I made tropical fruit salad with a papaya, a pineapple, four mangoes, three oranges and juice of three limes.

When I finished the fruit at around 2:00 I ate some yogurt with fruit salad.  Suzette went to Hobby Lobby and I lay down to nap until 4:00.

At 4:30 I walked 1/3 mile and was pleased to see daffodils blooming announcing the cycle of growth was beginning again.

We started cooking dinner at 5:30.  I prepped four cloves of garlic and fetched four beers and cooked a cup of rice.

Suzette fetched the corn stick molds from the basement while I found recipe for cornbread in the Joy of Cooking on p. 578.  Suzette mixed the ingredients and filled the corn mold after heating and buttering each stick opening in the mold and placed the filled molds in the oven to bake.

Cajun BBQ Shrimp

Suzette used her modified Paul Prudhomme recipe from his Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook that tones down the spiciness and butter.

We did not have any shrimp stock so I substituted a mixture of 1/2 tsp. of dehydrated dashi mixed into hot water for the shrimp stock.

I had bought 1 1/2 lb. of really good looking Ecuadorian shrimp at El Super on Thursday.

She made the sauce in the large Le Creuset casserole by mixing the seasoning ingredients with 1/4 lb. of melted butter.  Then zsuzette tossed the shrimp in the sauce to coat them with sauce and finally she added beer to finish the dish and covered the casserole to let the shrimp cook.

We decided to steam a few asparagus also.  I fetched the steamer and filled it to the bottom of the basket with water and put it on the stove and turned on the heat while Suzette snapped 9 asparagus stalk bases and put the asparagus in the steamer.

Pretty soon everything was ready.  Suzette spooned some rice into each of two pasta bowls and scooped enough shrimp and sauce to cover the pile of rice and I opened two beers and we were ready to eat.

We agreed that the dish was better with French bread, but our French bread had molded on the trip and we had none at the moment.

We love this recipe when there are fresh shrimp as there were tonight.  We did not take seconds and Suzette said there was enough shrimp left for another meal.

I also bought chicken thighs on Thursday so tomorrow  night we will cook be some form of sautéed and baked chicken thighs with broccoli.

We watched the CNN special, Lincoln, Divided We Stand.

I loved the documentary and stayed up until 11:00 to see the first four or five hours of it.

I am loving learning about this period of American history, especially since so much of it parallels and explains the era in which Grant came to prominence and power and our era.

The similarity of the post-Lincoln administration of Andrew Johnson had striking parallels to the Trump era that brought Grant to the Presidency, including anti-democratic racism, support for Southern revolt against Reconstruction and hate crimes against blacks by the President that precipitated impeachment of the President are striking.

Bon Appetit