Tag: jambalaya

Soup’s on

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 16 Comments
Our shade tree would like some shade, please…

Why, yes, I am insane, and thanks for asking.

Boss wants soup, boss gets soup.

When the temps hit triple digits — 101°, another record — the first thing I think about preparing for dinner is a piping-hot pot of soup. A fragrant chicken soup with chickpeas and vegetables from Melissa Clark, to be specific.

OK, between you and me, I was thinking more along the lines of a jambalaya, or maybe some slow-cooker chipotle-honey chicken tacos.

But when I made the mistake of consulting Herself about the week’s menu, she ordered up salmon with potatoes and asparagus, and the aforementioned soup.

Well, whaddaya gonna do?

We get two dinners out of a pound and a half of salmon, a half-dozen taters, and 12 ounces of asparagus.

And that burly soup serves six to eight, which means we’ll probably be eating it through the weekend. Especially since I made a fresh loaf of whole-wheat bread to keep it company.

Maybe next week I’ll pitch a gazpacho at her. Yeah, that’d be cool. …

Oh, snap

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments

An iPhone camera on full zoom is no match for a backlit hawk at daybreak.

Now and then I wish I still had a real camera. Like this morning, when I saw our friendly neighborhood Cooper’s hawk perched in a tree across the arroyo from El Rancho Pendejo.

He was looking for breakfast, and I was looking for … well, for what, I’m not certain. I wander a bit in the morning, peering through windows without my glasses on while muttering to Herself, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, and the voices in my head between large mugs of strong black coffee and small doses of the news.

Yesterday afternoon I was looking for dinner, and it was surprising how many basic items I was having trouble finding, even with my glasses on.

Eggs were back at Wholeazon Amafoods, so that long national nightmare seems to be at an end for the moment.

But the seafood counter was bare. Emp-ty. As in nothing atall atall. Maybe all the delicious fishies were booked on Southwest? Beats me. But I needed a half pound of shrimp for jambalaya and I waddn’t gon’ get it, me.

Also, the only andouille available had already been tried and found wanting; there was no basil for bolognese, unless you like your basil in huge plastic tubs when what you need is eight leaves; and there were no radishes for the salads, in tubs or otherwise.

Wow, this is really blossoming into a First World Problem, I thought. Someone should write a stern letter to the editor.

Somehow I managed to drop a couple hundy anyway before shoving off to Sprouts, where they had a single packet of basil, but in an unattractive shade of brown. Still, their sausage and shrimp were suitable, so, winning.

Sans basil, the bolognese is on the back burner for now. But the jambalaya turned out fine, lots better than what the Squeaker of the House is going to have to eat for the next two years.

But then again, maybe he likes the taste.

Piece of Cake

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments

OK, I know you folks floating around out there in the Innertubes are dying to know all the deets about the exotic life of the retired velo-scribbler.

So, hold my fake beer and dig this:

Yesterday I went to Lowe’s for some lawn soil to spread over the recently seeded bare patches in the yard and gave ’em a good watering, then mowed the healthier bits of grass. Later I cooked up a big ol’ pot of jambayala.

This morning I toasted and tea’d Herself, who has a full day at the lab. Then I fed and watered Miss Mia Sopaipilla, giving her a few head-bumps in a sunny spot for dessert, and emptied her litter box.

Next I got a loaf of bread going and set about watering a few shrubs and one tree out front, using SuperDuper! to back up The Main Mac to an external drive, downloading an OS update, and washing the breakfast dishes (two cups of strong black coffee and one of strong black tea will lead to multitasking).

And now the garbage is going out. Boom! You can’t stop me, so don’t even try.

I hate to go all Hollywood on you little people like this, but I figure the few of you who still have jobs deserve to know how I’m pissing away your Social Security contributions on my rock-’n’-roll lifestyle.

Howling at the Wolf Moon

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 3 Comments

A nearly full moon and a bowl of jambalaya will spice up your dreams.

Eating spicy dinners as a full moon looms is a recipe for weird dreams.

The Wolf Moon won’t arrive until tomorrow, but it’s been howling at me for a few nights now, ever since I made a pot of jambalaya, a favorite dish adapted from a recipe by Judy Walker and Marcelle Bienvenu by way of The Washington Post.

Last night I dreamed I had been confined to an assisted-living facility, and was sitting at some sort of crafts table with a couple old biddies, one on either side of me.

I was trying to write captions for some photos — longhand, on paper, since I had no laptop — and the biddy on my left kept crowding me, piling napkins and letters and whatnot onto my workspace. The one to my right asked me what a young pup like me was doing in the old mutts’ home, and I explained that I had apparently gotten my bell rung in some sort of bike mishap and was being held for observation.

This led to a good deal of cackling, especially after they asked how I was paying for my stay and I said I had no idea. Certainly not by writing those goddamn captions, ’cause I wasn’t making much headway there. If Herself had thrown me over and the Repugs had finally croaked Social Security and Medicare I was in a world of shit. “Golden Girls” meets “Cuckoo’s Nest.”

When I woke up it was in my own bed and Herself was still here, so I made her toast, tea, and oatmeal just to stay on her good side. You never know. There’s a bad moon on the rise.