Garlic

I ordered some garlic to plant in the fall.  Fresh garlic is amazing.  We haven’t planted garlic bulbs for a few years but it got in my head a few months ago (when picking through the small cloved pitiful supermarket offerings) and finally ordered these 2 varieties today:

 Chesnok Red Garlic and Russian Giant Garlic

 ~Irene

Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen

I like Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen. 

But what I’d really like to see is a show where a group of people work all day, think of what to make for dinner, then go and shop and cook for finicky eaters 6 or 7 days a week on 40 or 50 dollars a week.

The finicky eaters would judge the food and then fall asleep watching the History Channel, while the contestants cleaned up the kitchen.   

THAT SHOW would impress me.  Searing 3 scallops and artfully arranging them on a plate with 7 different garnishes, not so much. 

~Irene

Some Vegetable Garden Pictures

Some pictures of the garden.  The tomatoes are FINALLY starting to grow. The mustard greens are awesome. 

Mustard Greens:

 

Onions:   

Oregano:    

Sage:  

Teeny Tomato (GROW, YOU! GROW!)  

Radishes: Potatoes:

Tonight’s Dinner - Cod Florentine

I love Recipezaar.com’s search engine, so I tend to make it my first stop when I’m looking for something specific.  Today, my mission was ‘low fat’ + ‘fish’ + ‘greens’.  Tonight I made Cod using this recipe I found, along with whole grain rice. 

My substitutions:  Cod instead of Sole, Mustard Greens (from the garden) instead of spinach, fat free 1/2 n 1/2 instead of cream, and clam base instead of chicken broth.   It came out GREAT!  Teensy bit too watery, so next time I will increase the amount of flour. 

Here’s the original recipe (from the link above):
1 1/2 lbs fresh spinach,cleaned
1lb sole fillets
1/2 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
1 teaspoon olive oil
3 green onions, chopped
1 garlic clove,crushed
2 cups mushrooms,sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup light cream or milk
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated

Preheat oven 375*.

1. Cook washed spinach with water still clinging over medium-high heat until wilted; drain. When cool enough to handle, gently squeeze out remaining moisture. Finely chop and place in an oiled casserole.
2. Top with the sole filet and sprinkle with Old Bay seasoning.
3. In skillet heat oil; add onions,salt, garlic and mushrooms; sauté for 4 minutes; whisk in flour and slowly add chicken broth and cream stirring contantly for 3-4 minutes until thickened; stir in Parmesan cheese.
4. Spoon over sole.
5. Cover and bake for 20 minutes; uncover and bake another 5 minutes.

Goodbye, Tony

So, Cliff and I watched the Sopranos finale (me for the 2nd time, him for the 1st) last night.  After reading endless blogs and message boards about what the ending ‘means’, I was on the lookout for whatever I might have missed the first time around.  Sorry to say, no enlightenment here.  I did get the giggle of watching Cliff’s confusion about 4 secs into the black screen as he looked from me to the screen, thinking that the On Demand had malfunctioned. 

I consider myself relatively intelligent, so I can’t help but think that we weren’t meant to know for sure what happened.  I really wanted a conclusion.  SOME kind of resolution to the dream sequences, the foreshadowing, the Godfather references.  It’s so disappointing that I really don’t even have a desire to watch any of the old episodes again.  I had entertained the idea of buying the whole series for us to watch, but what’s the point now?  We sat through 2 year long hiatuses (hiati?) for 10 seconds of black screen?  Hmpf.  OK Mr. Chase, you win.  Apparantly I’m not smart enough to see the brilliance of that one. 

~Irene