Brown Rice Salad and Fried Rice Hybrid

John's away for several days, so the frig is mine. Today it contained:

• Washed salad greens
• a little left over grilled NY steak
• a little chunk of tofu
• a dozen eggs
  
• some veggies - a few celery stalks, a carrot stick, a clump of broccoli, green onions, a few mushrooms.
• some cooked rice.
  
• a nice organic apple.
  
• no wine

Step 1) Pull a bottle of wine from the secret "John's away and there's no wine in the house" stash cleverly hidden in my underwear drawer, and start it chilling. (Perrin Reserve Cotes du Rhone, blanc)

Step 2) Set the table, and put the washed greens on the plate. Dress them lightly with olive oil and Sherry vinegar, salt and pepper.

Step 3) Slice up the apple, and arrange decoratively on a little plate.

Step 4) Slice the veggies, steak, cut the tofu into small chunks, and scramble an egg with just a bit of water.

Step 5) Heat a frying pan over high heat with a bit of butter. When bubbling and beginning to brown, pour in the egg, swirl, and fold it together with a fork to cook it through. Remove from the pan to a little plate.

Step 6) Add a tablespoon of peanut oil to the pan (which should be clean, BTW. If not, use a paper towel to clear the remnants of egg) and swirl until hot. Add the celery, carrots, and mushrooms. Toss to coat with oil and cook for about 30 seconds. Add the broccoli. Toss to coat and cook for 30 seconds. Add the steak. Toss etc. Sprinkle with light soy sauce and a splash of dry Sherry. Add the tofu. Toss and cook for 30 seconds, to warm through. Add the rice, and perhaps a bit more wine or soy if it seems to be sticking.

Step 7) Spoon the fried rice over the dressed lettuce, and sit down to eat. The combination of the tangy salad dressing with the slight salt of the soy is just great.

We used to use Fried Rice as an option for a quick, use whatever is in the frig meal when every one was hungry in a hurry. And the Brown Rice Salad is always a favorite. This combination works well.

Eating Alone is just a chance to show off my new orchid

Saturday, another long day fraught with peril: Fine Arts Scholarship Audition day.
It went well, considering.
a) It was pouring down rain, so no one regretted being indoors.
b) I stopped at Safeway on my way out to the University campus to pick up refreshments for the day and got distracted in the floral department by the lovely orchid display. The Refreshment Table needed something lovely to set the correct tone for the day. What about that very graceful, elongated, delicate Alceara Pacific Nova 'Pacific Heights'? Indeed, it charmed at least the charming Chinese accompanist who spent most of the day running up and down stairs between warm up rooms and the audition room (cleverly disguised as a sailboat repair and storage room, but that's another story - the arts are seriously under siege, folks). It was she that pointed out the bloom has a very clear little face.
Made it home just as John, jauntily attired in suit, pink shirt, and bow tie en route to the vaguely questionable Susan G Komen "Think Pink" fundraising wine tasting, was pulling out. So it was me and the dog and the leftovers in the frig: Roast chicken, steamed broccoli, oven fired potatoes, some lettuce, 1/2 a really good mango, and some strawberries. Hmm, there's an avocado about to go bad.
Step 1: make a fruit salad with the mango, strawberries, and an orange. Sprinkle with Chambord. Put it in a crystal bowl.
Step 2: Set the table. Place the new orchid in a nice cachepot in the center.
Step 3: Make a Chicken Potato salad with the broccoli, sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and some salt and pepper.
Step 4: Wash lettuce and make a bed of greens, top with the Chicken Potato Salad, and garnish with avocado fans.
Had a glass of wine (Penfolds Chardonnay). I felt better. It all worked out.

Fiddlehead Cookbook Blog

So nice! A group of young Alaskan women are cooking their way through the Fiddlehead Cookbook this summer!
http://fiddlingthrufiddlehead.blogspot.com/

Greg's Benedict

The hubby has had a hankering for Eggs Benedict, and last weekend tried a recipe off the Internet, but forgot a key ingredient and it had triple the amount of lemon most recipes call for. Ahem.

So this Sunday he went with the Fiddlehead recipe, used crab, and although we were out of English muffins, Everything bagels were just fine. A yummy, sunny, Sunday morning breakfast!

Easter 2010

Easter Dinner was at our house this year - a gathering of long-time friends and family, people we've enjoyed many a meal with and a couple of new faces, a few folks missing and missed, all dear to our hearts.
A special pleasure to pull out the crystal, polish the silver, and, since I forgot to get chocolate bunnies, to make little bunny napkin folds.....In anticipation (it was Sunday afternoon after all) I set the champagne flutes out.
We started out with lox that our neighbor makes, the requisite deviled eggs, and a lusciously runny cheese, the Mt. Townsend Creamery Cirrus. And, miracle of miracles, Scharffenberger bubbly.
We made a Jerry's Double-smoked ham, soaked overnight in water and then baked slowly for 4 hours and glazed with a Honey Mustard Bourbon glaze (thanks to our friend Elizabeth for sending some magnificent stout-hearted Bourbon from Bourbon country), accompanied by oven-roasted cauliflower and beets, vinaigrette potato salad, fabulously garlicky and lemony carrots rapé, and really flaky wonderful warm biscuits. The biscuit maker was embarrassed thinking they'd failed to rise and brought some store-bought challah - not even close. The biscuits were a hit. Followed by a delicious green salad dressed with mandarin oranges, nuts, and craisens in a light oil and vinegar dressing.
Wine flowed - Layer Cake Malbec, AN/2, Guigal Coates du Rhones, Dry Creek Heritage Zinfandel. La Posta Cucina Blend, Kung Fu Girl Riesling, Goats du Roam Rosé. We also enjoyed a slightly effervescent "100% Good" Elderflower Pressé.
Dessert was fabulous - a coconut and lime cheesecake with whipped cream, I'm hoping Joan will share the recipe. We have one non-cheesecake eater in the crowd, and happened to have some little oranges that needed to be used, so I made some Ambrosia out of them. A friend recently sent us the new Edna Lewis Southern Cooking cookbook, and I used her recipe. On the facing page was a recipe for Glazed Strawberries - you cook a sugar syrup to 300°F, then dip fresh (dry) strawberries in it creating a little crystal sugar glaze on them - really quite delightful.
The light-weights peeled off about this time, but the rest of us finished the evening with a jolly round of Apples to Apples.
It is spring, and we are truly lucky and well-blessed. So many reasons to be thankful.

Home alone

Fog in Juneau prevented John from making it home tonight - we had planned to actually go out to dinner! So I stopped at the grocery store late, picked up some frozen cocktail shrimp (fondly recalling the coffee can size we used to get from Petersburg...).
Boiled up some capellini, sauteed leeks and garlic in butter, added mushrooms, some snow peas, tossed it a bit, added a dollop of white wine (that would be the lovely and drinkable Yalumba Viognier), let that come to a boil, then reduced to a simmer, added the shrimp to heat through.
Plated it all up with a tossed green salad, and a side of a really good mango, strawberries, and navel oranges. And finished the lovely and drinkable Yalumba Viognier.
John sent a text to say he was watching a really good NBA game. How nice for him.

The Remains of the Day

Got to spend time at home this weekend, so went all out: Made a batch of granola, made bread. John marinated sliced beef for beef teriyaki then went of to a wine training seminar (tough work sometimes) so I sliced up veggies, cleaned the acre of real estate off the Romaine, and made roasted turnips.
It was a lovely dinner of beef teriyaki on brown rice (shades of the Fiddlehead), turnips roasted with rosemary and bay, green salad with grapefruit and onion vinaigrette, fresh honey butter oatmeal bread (double shades of the Fiddlehead) crispy apples and Veramonte SB.
Then we watched Helvetica, a fascinating movie about the font. Who knew? Really - if you can, watch it. Nancy