I’m a lucky girl. The Husband took a breather from his mathematical endeavors this morning to make me this yummy breakfast. Isn’t it lovely?

Polish kielbasa & scrambled eggs with fresh chives and nasturtium blossoms from the garden.

Yum!

After breakfast, we had a spirited discussion about snails and I again reiterated my desire to have a chicken or two for the backyard. Imagine this meal made with fresh Arucana eggs! That would be eggs laid by chickens fed on snails fed on fresh petit pois sprouts and morels. Wow.

Plus, how cute would it be to putter about the garden, throwing these dainty but damned escargot morsels to my pet chicken helpers??

The weather’s been getting progressively warmer so last night we decided to do a little grilling on our tiny hibachi-sized Weber.

I was only planning to do a simple marinade for the large shrimp we had purchased but The Husband had other plans. With a gleam in his eye, he proceeded to ransack the kitchen in order to concoct Le Grand Marinade.

This included at least:
melted butter, onion powder, paprika, chile flakes, red chile oil, stone ground mustard, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar, worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, peanut & sesame oil, lemon juice and chicken bouillon.

I started getting panicky around ingredient 50, but he poo-poo-ed my concerns and kept adjusting and tasting while I worriedly sliced zucchini and skewered mushrooms.

But when we sat down to eat, I had to admit the shrimp was not bad. As a matter of fact they were delicious. By the end of the meal I was licking and sucking the empty shrimp shells trying to get at the tangy, spicy, totally addictive marinade.

Some of the mushrooms were brushed with the marinade too. Oh, they were so good!

Like most of his wild kaleidoscopic mixing sprees, it’s probably a once in a lifetime dish. After all, the ingredients and proportions would be hard enough to recreate but how do you capture the flavor of wild abandon, whimsy and inspiration?

Sorry for the long hiatus folks. First some kind of horrible flu/cold/cough knocked me out, then I was away in New Orleans on business from Sunday thru Wednesday night.

New Orleans is well known for its incredible food. Gumbos, jambalaya, seafood, muffaleta, beignets, boudin and more. Unfortunately, most of what I ate was barely edible, highly expensive convention food.

If the dried out croissant or cold cocktail bits weren’t enough to sustain me through the day, I’d order something from the expensive room service menu. Not exciting food, but solid sustenance after a full day of back-to-back meetings and evening cocktail parties.

Plus there’s definitely something satisfying, decadent and thoroughly enjoyable about ordering room service. I ordered a hot bowl of chicken soup my first night and ate it curled up in bed at midnight, crumbling crackers with abandon, knowing that I’d just move over to the fresh 2nd double bed to sleep. Crumbfree.

And my last afternoon there, I ordered the Turkey Club you see on the right, eating, packing and reading the NY Times before leaving for the airport.

While most of my culinary encounters were non-events (I only had 3 real meals in 4 days) I am happy to recommend Cafe Adelaide, an offshoot of the famous Commander’s Palace Restaurant of New Orleans. It’s located on the first floor of the Loews Hotel. I had a delicious entree of Pompano filet with oyster mushrooms, applewood bacon & gnocchi; for dessert, cappuccino mousse semifreddo with 3 little beignets dusted with sugar.

I’m hopeful that my next trip to New Orleans will be at a more leisurely pace and that I’ll have a real chance to sample some of the great flavors and dishes of this charming city.

Cafe Adelaide
Loews Hotel
600 Polydras Blvd
New Orleans, LA
$$$

Another cold day in the Bay Area. Made a luscious risotto with the remaining fresh shitake mushrooms, pot au feu stock and meats. Added a splash of white wine and a handful of parmesan and the meal was ready.

Dungeness crab were in season so we purchased a pair a week at Costco throughout the month of March. I’d have D clean out the body as I was too queasy and wimpy to do this job. When I tried, I wouldn’t be able to actually eat the crab.

We’d break off the legs, remove the apron from the body, clean out the gooey stuff then break the main shell in half. There’s a ton of meat in the body as well.
As they came pre-cooked, we’d simply eat it on a newspaper covered table with a chilled white wine.

I know they’re great with butter and lemon but these crabs were rich and fine as is. We also kept meaning to use them in other dishes but they were all so sweet and delicious eaten straight out of the shell, we never managed to prepare them any other way. Well, that’s something to look forward to next year.