Recap

I don't have pictures of food for this installment, largely because we were so eager to eat the food that I didn't sacrifice any time before we dug in. A few days ago Dan and I made a delicious Thai Lemongrass Soup. It was made pretty traditionally (except that we didn't know to find Kaffir lime leaves in the freezer section of the local Asian market and substituted lime zest), right down to the fish sauce and fresh lemongrass from the farmer's market. Lemongrass soup is probably one of my favorite foods, but I have it seldom and had never really thought to make it myself... probably because I assumed that it would call for ingredients that I wouldn't know how to find. Daniel did the shopping (bless him) and reported that not only does the market have everything we needed, it also carries such delicacies as goat penis if we should ever care to branch out a bit in our culinary experiments. No, thank you. No.

I also baked a Swedish dessert called Fransk äppelkaka - French apple cake. It has a rather strange texture because the almond/egg mixture that gives the dish its non-apple flavor is essentially a meringue incorporating almonds and sugar. It's interesting, indeed, to see a Swedish take on a French recipe that is apparently enough a part of Swedish culture that it is one of a smattering of recipes in an old book on Scandinavian cooking.

Last night I fell back on one of my favorite quick-cooking recipes: Tilapia with salsa. I basically just toss the fish in flour, salt and pepper, sauté it in a bit of olive oil, and then throw some salsa in the pan with it as the fish finished cooking through. I served it over brown rice and, looking for ways to use up other food, threw some broccoli with a bacon-mozzarella white sauce onto the plates. Not that this represented brilliant flavor combination... it just used up food and catered to my hankering for salty/fatty flavor.

Tonight will be my typical crock pot kosher-salt-rubbed beef roast with port wine, parsnips, turnips, carrots and whatever else we have in the house. I like this particular dish because it takes very little time to prep and I can make it in the morning and have it ready to go whenever... even tomorrow, if I want to stretch it. This is an ideal choice for tonight, since we essentially have to truck over to the State Farm office as soon as Dan gets home. This way, we can grab some food before we run off, and it matters little exactly when he gets home. It makes for good left-overs, too. With a little barbecue sauce, the meat makes for nice sandwiches.