We Needed Vegetables

After the feeding frenzy that was Sunday to celebrate Adam’s birthday, we needed to cleanse our bodies with lots of veggies. But just because we opted for a plant-based meal, didn’t mean we needed to opt out of flavor and creativity. Adam might disagree, but I think our meal was lovely without meat.

I perused our cookbooks and grabbed one we haven’t used much. I love Laura Calder’s videos (I wish she would do more) and her other cookbooks. I follow her on IG and want her glassware and dishes, too. They are so pretty and so French.

I tossed out random recipe ideas to Zeke and Rei until I had a menu and a grocery list: asparagus with almond cream sauce, spinach with orange slices, burnt noodles with green onions, and a non-Laura Calder recipe, spicy tomatoes on toasted baguette.

Rei started by peeling, de-pithing, and slicing up oranges.

I prepped the asparagus by snapping off the ends and bringing a pot of water to boil. I’d added some salt and lemon juice before cooking the asparagus in simmering water for about 10–15 minutes.

Once done, I removed them from the water and stopped the cooking by running cold water over them. In other words, you blanched it. With the addition of lemon juice, which is new.

I put these on a platter and Rei placed them into at 140 degree oven to keep warm. Later we added the almond cream sauce and the spinach as we prepared each dish.

Next up was the almond cream sauce. I’d doubled the recipe so we put butter, garlic, chopped onion, cream, champagne (it called for wine but I opened champagne instead), and some blanched slivered almonds into a saucepan to bring to a boil and reduce by one third. This took 15–20 minutes.

Once it was reduced and had cooled slightly (to avoid exploding all over the kitchen), Rei put the mixture into the blender and blended until creamy. I think Rei added some extra cream to get the creamiest of textures. Spoiler: this was kind of gross and we won’t be making it again. Yeah, I added some more cream. The sauce wasn’t bad at first, but after a bit it was indeed gross.

This too went into the oven.

One of our favorite recipes is from Bon Appetit’s Brad Leone. The original recipe is charred tomato toast. I’ve adapted it and didn’t use the ricotta cheese for dinner. Let’s be honest: it didn’t need it.

I added some olive oil to the pan, heated it up and then dropped in about 6 cloves of unpeeled garlic and some tomatoes. I sprinkled some salt on the tomatoes and added three dried de arbol chiles. I love that we have a bag of these and we are actually using them.

I stirred them around for a while until they got smooshy. Once they got smooshy, I added 2 TBS of butter to enrich the sauce.

I put the tomato sauce into a bowl, removed the skins from the garlic, and then chopped up the garlic. The garlic was cooked but not smooshy. We ate this on toasted baguette. This was so good, that I’ve decided that we are going to triple this recipe, add some ground sausage, and serve it on angel hair pasta for dinner tonight with a Caesar salad. Look for that write up tomorrow. You were a little iffy about how spicy the tomatoes were when you ate them last night; are you sure your delicate taste buds will be able to handle it again tonight?

Since Adam was working until 8, we weren’t going to be eating until 8:30. This meant that Rei and Adam’s girlfriend Sophie needed some snacky snacks. We hadn’t planned well so Rei and Zeke rifled through the pantry to find some stale crackers, old olives, and some cheese. Not fancy but it kept them from rioting in the kitchen. I ended up eating a hard cooked egg from Easter, too. Those things are the bomb — definitely going to make more once we finish this batch!

We had a little bit of time until we needed to finish up dinner so Rei made some whipped cream for the modified mud pie we’d made for Adam’s birthday the day before. We were too full from dinner so we weren’t able to eat it.

Rei used our homemade vanilla. It was good. It was the first time we’d used it! I liked it even though it was a little vodka-ey.

Rei likes to whip whipping cream by hand even though it’s a lot of work. Rei’s been working out and was able to beat the cream into submission. It’s fun to whip cream by hand, and super satisfying when you finally get it!

Rei put the whipped cream into a piping bag hoping to make something pretty of the top. It didn’t work so they used a spoon to spread the whipped cream around. You were the one who told me to pipe it on! I told you it wouldn’t work out well (also I didn’t want to get the piping stuff out and wanted to avoid it if at all possible but that’ neither here nor there) but would you listen? Nope! I thought you would get out a pretty piping tip and use it rather than just the bag.

This will horrify some of you but not only did we have maraschino cherries, but I absolutely love them. Yes, I know they are bleached and full of bad chemicals but the nostalgia…too bad these didn’t have stems. That would have really been the mood. I’m going to pretend that this entire paragraph doesn’t exist. Maraschino cherries are pretty gross, and did you actually just say “That would have really been the mood”? I can’t even.

Our freezer is pretty full right now so we had to be efficient and stack. This barely fit above Donato’s lasagna and some cubes of frozen chicken stock. We like to live life on the edge in this household.

Finally, it was time to wilt the spinach. I did this in two batches. I melted 2 TBS of butter, added the spinach, covered for a minute or two and then added to the bowl. Ya know, I’m surprised we didn’t add more butter. Weird.

Eventually, this got mixed up before serving and damn was the spinach good. This is so simple and such a lovely combination. Wilted spinach with oranges. Who knew? Now we do, and we will definitely be making this again!

The final dish was a bit strange and didn’t turn out well. We won’t be making it again. Rei had chopped up some green onions which we set aside. I brought 4 cups of water to a boil on a separate burner as I got the cast iron pan heated and prepared for the pasta. I added 4 TBS of butter, melted it, and then added the broken pasta pieces. I made a mess of the stove. Understatement of the century! There were pasta bits EVERYWHERE. I’m talking on the stove, on the counter, on the floor, in your hair, on the ceiling, all over the walls, in the sink, across the hall, in Adam’s bedroom, under the bathroom tiles, on the roof, in the chicken coop, in the — you get the gist. Pasta was everywhere. We’ll be finding pasta bits in the cabinets for years to come, and don’t even get me started on the floor.

I think I had too much in the pan. I continued to turn it over, making an even bigger mess, and once it was somewhat brown, I sprinkled 4 envelopes of beef bouillon powder over the pasta and then poured all the water over it. I covered the pasta and set the heat to low. This cooked for about 5 minutes before I put into the oven to keep warm until Adam got home and showered.

Rei sprinkled green onions on top before we set it on the table.

Asparagus with almond cream sauce. Asparagus? Thumbs up. Cream sauce? Big thumbs down. It was Gross with a capital G. I ended up eating the asparagus plain, which was actually quite nice.I had to scrape off the sauce.

Spicy tomato sauce on toasted baguette? Yum! Oh, that was fantastic! I continue to surprise myself, because I used to not be able to stand pretty much anything spicy, but I’ve been getting better!

Wilted spinach with oranges? Yum! The oranges added a sweet freshness to the spinach, which was lovely.

Burnt angel hear with green onions? Yeah, no. And not worth modifying to add better flavor. The pasta tasted burnt (yes, I know, it’s literally called ‘burnt pasta’ but still! not my jam) and it was just plain boring.

After dinner Rei added 20 candles (19 plus one to grow on) to the modified mud pie and we sang happy birthday to Adam. Isn’t it weird how, to celebrate another rotation around the sun, we light an object on fire and chant semi-musically around one person, before extinguishing it and stabbing the object?I am pretty sure that semi-musically is being generous.

Yes, he blew out the candles. We are all family here. Yay! Adam really is turning (COVID-) 19! LOL!

This was pretty good but needs some work. Less butter in the cookie crust. The chocolate sauce was amazeballs. Totally making that again. We are going to have two types of ice cream. And then less whipped cream. More experimentation to come. I don’t think the amount of whipped cream was an issue, but rather the length of time it spent in the freezer. Personally, I’m not a fan of frozen whipped cream. Yes, I know that’s controversial but I don’t care. Fight me, Adam.

We seem to be revolving our daily life around planning dinner. Breakfasts are a free-for-all unless I make a frittata with leftovers and way too many eggs. Lunches are leftovers or some other random thing from the pantry or fridge. Zeke has gotten the message and is leaving me and Rei to cook together in the kitchen and it feels really good. He can have his time with or without Rei some other night this week.

Rei? How are you doing? Want to chime in? I know you were diligently working on homework at one point and had an appointment at 11.

Yeah, I’m pretty much done with my chem stuff, and I would like to give a moment of thanks to Khan Academy Chemistry for singlehandedly teaching me everything I know about chemistry. I will forever be in your debt.

Anyways, dinner last night was a mixed basket of successes and not-quites, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The mud pie was great too — I really liked the Oreo crust which you almost completely omitted (a travesty; it was awesome, but a little too much butter caused us to need to practically excavate it with a chisel and hammer. Still tasted great, though).

Welp, I have homework to finish, a book to read, and some lunch to eat, so I’m gonna head off now. Until next time, ciao, and have a lepretingular day!

Rei and Terri <I:0