Good Eats

And then after my somewhat productive weekend of settling in the new transplants, last Monday night there was my attempt to be normal and cook myself some dinner.  Truth be told, I probably would not even have tried it midweek, with the way work has been shaking out these days, but since I knew I had our annual neighborly dinner on Tuesday, and we promised to bring dessert, I thought I'd leave early and attempt to do some grocery shopping for THAT - try to home-make a dessert - and that allowed me to get a tomato and a chayote for Monday night dinner.  Probably a bit cliché for a working woman - I wouldn't even think of taking some time to do something good and healthy for myself, but yet I'll do it for my neighbors.  Ah well, however it happens, I'll be grateful that it happens.

So, for my dinner, I already had some fried tofu stashed in the freezer from a weekends-back trip to Chinatown with the parental units.  And then there's the shiso - yet to be truly harvested.  And I had the powdered tamarind soup base in the pantry. So that formed the basis for a vegetarian version of gia ba ba - a tamarind-based dish that my Mama makes, with pork, and the tamarind soup base, eaten with a good condiment-side of strong nuoc mam that is garlicky and spicy.  Well, in my vegetarian version, the chayote and tomato rounded out the soup, no nuoc mam, but some good grinds of the Trader Joe's lemon pepper, all over a bed of brown rice with quinoa.  It was my first time trying that grain mix (I've had it at restaurants), and it was tasty and easy in the rice cooker - definitely a repeater.

So the food pix....

Harvested shiso - I didn't bother to wash it.  It's all organic, right?

 

Shiso leaves stacked and ready to be chiffonaded.

 

 



In the pot on the stove, cooking away.

 

In the bowl = dinner.

And next day's dessert didn't turn out half bad.  A nectarine and blueberry crumble.  Other than the fruit (which I bought the Monday night), I was able to make do with ingredients I had on hand - yay me!  I put it all together in the morning before work, let it rest in the fridge during the day, and asked sissy to put it in the oven an hour before our invitation - it baked while she went out to pick up some ice cream to go on the side. 

 

It's a quite lovely tradition, our annual neighborly dinner.  My next door neighbor, Ms. V, started it by inviting us over.  This year, our newest neighbor, Mr. B, hosted it.  We ate outside on his terrace.  He had a light, and that has inspired me to go ahead and get that done for mine, at some point.  Anyway, Ms. S was there as well - we sat out for 4 hours.  Just lovely.  Unfortunately, it's rarer than one would think to know one's neighbors in New York City, let alone socialize with them. 

 

We are very luck in this little corner of Yorkville.