Cool Food Stuff

Karen has had the last two days off, and that usually means something different when it comes to food.

Yesterday's dinner does not seem out of the ordinary—steak and potatoes. Oh, but there was that amazing lobster bisque that Karen concocted from the stock she made a few weeks ago and some of the frozen lobster meat.

And dessert was homemade honeydew melon sorbet, which Daniel helped make because a melon that Karen bought a while ago wasn't very sweet, and half of it had been sitting in the refrigerator for awhile. So rather than let it go bad, she and Daniel pureed it in the blender, along with a syrup made with sugar and fresh mint from our garden, and lime juice. The melon wasn't too appealing on its own, but as sorbet it took on a new and delicious life.

Now, Karen actually made a little more of the syrup than the sorbet recipe called for, so she decided to use the rest to make non-alcoholic mint juleps, like we used to enjoy as Disneyland. The result, which had crushed ice in it so that we didn't have to wait for it to chill, was not exactly like Disneyland's. But it was delicious and refreshing.

While Karen and I were out at the library yesterday, we stopped at the local grocery store to shop for meats (our little market has a great butcher and good meat prices). Among other things, we found packages of chicken quarters for 79 cents a pound, so we stocked up a bit.

For today's lunch, Karen tried to duplicate the dish her mother made when she was growing up, which was called "red chicken" by the family. Karen has not been able to find her mother's recipe, but she has become quite adept at finding recipes online and adapting them. The result was baked chicken with a sweet ketchup-based sauce and rings of onion. Karen says it was very close. I just thought it was delicious.

And tonight we made our annual trek to our local Pan-Asian restaurant East of Suez, to get in before it closes on September 1st (which is before Karen's next day off). We had planned to make it dinner for two, but Tom got called to work for an evening shift at the last minute, and so William and Daniel came with. It wasn't their favorite experience, but Karen and I loved the food.

But we are going to have a nice dinner for just the two of us as soon as Karen and Tom both have another day off.