Wednesday, August 25, 2010

More Life with Jes

The weather broke – a cold front moved in and temps dropped. The wind did blow, but it was oh so much cooler. Next week the HHH is supposed to be fairly cool with temps in the low 90’s. I have smelled fall in the air, which has given me hope that things will cool off.

Jesse has been spending time at the local library. She has brought home all sorts of movies and books. Last week she brought us the movies Duplicity and Lawrence of Arabia. Duplicity was okay, but nothing exciting. Lawrence of Arabia was long, not exciting, a bit weird, but interesting. I did have the thought that nothing much in the Arab world changes over time – lots of tribal in-fighting and mistrust, the Arab fighters all go home when they feel like it, they resist modern ways, etc. The book would probably be better than the movie, but I don’t think I will read it right now.

Jesse also brought home a cookbook called "The Green Kitchen" – I call it the hippie cookbook. Yesterday she decided to try out a French recipe. So we headed off to Wal-Mart to purchase necessary foods. She invited some of her friends over for supper. We cleaned house all afternoon. Then she started the dinner which called for boiling all sorts of veggies, cooking fish, and making a homemade mayonnaise with garlic and herbs to dip it all in. Sounds good, right? It was, but it was also funny. She worked hard on the mayonnaise trying to get it to do right. Her first attempt failed, and we went online to get a better idea of what to do. She tried again and was successful, but disappointed - she didn’t like the smell of the mayonnaise much less the taste. I laughed at her as she fretted over the sauce trying to figure out how to make it better. Toby came in and asked what was for dinner. Jesse and I replied, "Mayonnaise." He was baffled at first, but soon got into the spirit of trying new recipes. We ended up boiling potatoes, onions, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, shrimp and sausage – kind of Cajun style since that is what we know. We grilled some small salmon portions along with some zucchini. I made some pico de gallo to go with whatever ‘cause you can’t go wrong with pico. The garlic mayonnaise was a hit with our guests and did work well with the meal. Jesse sent the leftover mayo home with them. It was kind of an international meal and very good.

We have also been throwing more pots. We fired them and have painted glaze on them. I think we will fire the glazed pots today – Ooh excitement!

She just came in and said, "Do you want me to fix you a poached egg? I saw this recipe..."

4 comments:

Buck said...

Our WX broke yesterday, too. It rained ALL day but cleared up by the time evening rolled around. Last night was the first night I've slept with the windows open since April (or so)... and it was GREAT.

re: trying new recipes. I USED to do that, back when I had a real kitchen. And someone to cook for... coz there's not much incentive when you're cooking for one. The cook REQUIRES compliments, yanno? ;-)

And scratch mayonnaise is HARD.

Jo Castillo said...

Yes, scratch mayo is hard. I used to have to make mayo and peanut butter when we first went to Bolivia. Everything there was from scratch, including picking a live chicken having it killed and plucked and taking it home warm.... Eeeeeuuuu. Another reason I don't eat chicken.

I'm hoping it cools off for you. Tomorrow is Gene's long birthday ride. It is supposed to be 31 degrees in the early a.m. but should be fine about 8am when he starts near the CO border. :)

Bag Blog said...

Jo, Happy Birthday to Gene and good luck with his ride. We will be riding the HHH on Saturday. Don't tell Jesse that you know how to make homemade peanut butter; she will be trying that next.

Buck, We don't have much of a kitchen right now, and I'm all about easy. Jesse is inspiring though.

Samantha said...

Nice recipe! Love eating the vegetables you list in the post.