To quote Simon and Garfunkle: Gee, but it’s great to be back home. Home is where I want to be.
Yep. So true.
The wedding was a blast. We had a great time with the family, meeting Jessica’s new in-laws, finally meeting my nephew Jacob’s wife, Rachael. And little Phoebe Rose – the sixth to carry the name Phoebe in our family. I wish we lived closer.
The downside of travel – other than the airports and airplanes which totally and completely disgustingly suck – is not having my own kitchen. Restaurants are great – but not for every meal every day. Fortunately, we had a local restaurant – not a cookie-cutter chain – by the hotel that had some pretty decent food. Fresh chilies in my omelette, fresh chilies on a burger… It was great to be back in Civilized California!
So to start counter-acting all of that restaurant food, it’s salad-time around here!
Today I made three different salads. A lentil, a rice, and a pasta. I’m working on portion control, so I didn’t make my normal feed-the-entire-neighborhood-and-the-school-down-the-street batches. Nope. Small, reasonable batches. Enough for dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. I’m workin’ on it…
The pasta salad was first.
I cooked up about six ounces of mini cheese-filled ravioli. I added 3 stalks of blanched asparagus, sliced, a minced green onion, 6 sliced pepperoncini, oil cured kalamata olives, and about a half-cup of red pepper and onion relish and about a half-cup of fig and caramelized onion sauce. Clean out that refrigerator!
The Lentil Salad started off with about a cup of French green lentils. I cooked them up and added some golden raisins, currants, walnuts, celery, diced red onion, green onion, herbs d’Provence, salt, pepper, red wine vinegar and olive oil.
For the rice salad, I cooked up a half-cup of whole-grain brown rice. To it, I added some walnuts, celery, diced carrots, peas, dill, salt, pepper, and white wine vinegar and olive oil.
They all went into the fridge.
For the salads, I plated some iceberg lettuce and baby romaine, topped it with the three salads and some grilled beef tips. I made a quick 1000 Island dressing with mayonnaise, chili sauce, and pickle relish.
It’s great to be back in the kitchen!