First… apologies for posting this a day late. I was kind of busy, though…
It was good to see all of the kids doing something for their mom. Ranging from a hand-made card to flowers, and one ridiculously large balloon (accurately predicted by my wife, too!), it was a good day of recognizing her and her profound impact on our wonderful children.
She’s an amazing mom and wife and I am thankful for her, every day.
Mid-afternoon, I started down the road of making dinner, beginning with extensive prep and organizing of ingredients. The menu for dinner was set as follows:
- Lamb & Leek burgers, with a coconut/lemon cream;
- Sautéed mushrooms on polenta; and,
- Warm olives in a lemon, herb, and roasted fennel seed oil
With the limitations of a propane cooktop, in terms of maximum heat output, the timing was going to be essential, if everything was going to hit the plate hot and fresh.
*Nerd alert* I ended up pulling together a spreadsheet that listed out the steps in each recipe (after my mods) and blocked the time for each, working in reverse. The end result was an integrated listing of the steps in all three tracks, so I could keep myself organized. I know…if you’ve worked with me, this is not at all a shock.
But, I did not want to mess this up, after all.
In the end, the propane vs natural gas effect equally impacted all three dishes, so dinner was 25 minutes late, but all done at once!
I will take that as a win.
Nice flavors and (I think) they complimented each other pretty well.
The capper, of course, was the cake our older daughter pulled off.
She integrated a melted, double-chocolate Gelato in the recipe, and did the rest from memory/off the cuff. As she has become so good at, this was sweet but not cloying, richly filling, and delicious.
After that, my wife and the girls retired to watch a movie while I cleaned up the mess I had made in the kitchen. Okay, for clarity, I got to listen to “dad music” while cleaning up my mess, resetting the coffee machine for the next morning and having a glass of wine.
At one point, while rinsing a pan in the sick, I looked up and realized that we were having a brief rain shower. About 3 minutes later, I looked up to see this, through the south-facing window.
Such a beautiful place. We are very fortunate.
Happy (belated) Mother’s day to all the moms out there!
Tight lines…