Thursday, June 10, 2010

Alchemy & Chocolate Dreams

Starting to get my land legs again, I think. At least I'm not waking up in the morning shaking. Mario seems to be doing better every day, although last night he had trouble sleeping because of the pain. I can't sleep next to Mario yet. When I try, I spend most of the night watching him and wanting to wake him up to see if he's feeling better. So I start out with him, and then I go downstairs to the couch.

I've been having lots of dreams on that couch. Last night, I dreamed a huge pack of dogs was chasing Mario. I told him to run and I ran toward the dogs to save Mario. I was tossing dogs left and right. The night before I had a solution to the Gulf of Mexico disaster. When I woke up, I wondered why they hadn't done it yet.

*sigh*

Mario said to me the other day, "You think this disaster in the Gulf is the end of the world, don't you?"

I nodded.

He said, "No wonder you're so upset."

I often think it's the end of the world.

I feel like cooking again. This is a good sign. Maybe cooking will ground me. It's been raining for so many weeks. I've got to do something. Been too distracted to write as much as I'd like. Been doing lots of library work.

Today I cooked a bunch of stuff using recipes from David Tanis's A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes. I decided on lots of protein, lots more than we usually have, especially all in one meal: salmon, eggs, chicken broth.

I made fried egg soup, wild salmon, and cucumber salad. I used Tanis's recipes as a template. Instead of frying the eggs as he suggested, I baked them sunnyside up. Then I put one each in a white bowl and poured the chicken broth over it. Just lovely! (I made the broth from organic chicken wings, garlic, ginger, and a bit of kale in the end.) It was amazingly simple, lovely, and delicious.

The cucumber salad was supposed to be Vietnamese cucumbers, but I skipped the hot peppers. Instead I cut up a cucumber, poured juice from half a lemon over it, ground black pepper into it and put it in the fridge to chill. When it was time to serve it, I added just a dash of olive oil, a bit of salt, some scallion slices, and then mixed it all up.

I served the baked salmon with lime slices and scallions.

It was all beautiful and delicious. All made from scratch.

Dessert was probably the best part. I heated up some frozen strawberries. Then I made chocolate sauce. I heated up water and some agave syrup. Then I shook in some organic pure dark cocoa powder. I stirred it all until it was melted and had the consistency of syrup. I cut up bananas and put them in a bowl; then I poured strawberries and their juice over the bananas. I poured the chocolate syrup over all that.

When we finished eating it, we stood over the nearly empty chocolate sauce pan and dipped bananas into the chocolate. Mmmmm.

It was a nice normal evening. I loved it.

Time for sleep. I shall have chocolate dreams, no doubt.

Sweet dreams all.

1 comment:

VQ said...

Oh Yum, when does your cafe open?
Have you been over here -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brenda-peterson/shining-in-the-dark-findi_b_604965.html

 
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