Brielle's Avalon

Didn’t know what to have for dinner tonight. Looked on the table: onions. Looked in the fridge: leftover pork, asparagus, mushrooms, beans and wine. Looked in the pantry: rice. OK, something to go over rice. Yes, sometimes I just make it up as I go along. So I walked outside and picked a lemon that was still on the tree.

I cut the onion in 2, then sliced it into slivers and fried it with a little bacon fat and mostly olive oil. A little bacon fat goes a long way. Then I threw in the onion. I sliced the lemon thinly and tossed it in, then some mushrooms. I’ll save 1/2 the basket for tomorrow and make more fried onions and mushrooms then, too. They make a fabulous side for any meat…well, anything, really.

The roommate put rice into a cooker and went back to what she was doing.

I snapped the bottoms off the asparagus, put it in a pan with water to boil and gave the ends to the chickens.

Then I looked back in the fridge and decided to slice up a couple dates and promised myself the rest would go into another batch of chutney before it gets too hot to cook. Cut up about 1/3 lb leftover pork, compleat with a bit of fat and a lot of gravy. Look back in fridge and pour a glass of wine, savour a sip and give the rest to the pot.

Decided the sauce was a bit thin so I made a slurry of 1/2 tsp corn starch and water, tipped the pan so the food could be pulled to one side and the sauce would slide to the low part and poured in the slurry, stirring well, then stirred it all back together. I also sprinkled in some garlic.

I put 3 heaping big spoonfulls of beans in just because. I’ll make refried beans out of the rest in a day or 2 when I have more time.

We had to wait for the rice to finish so I came in and wrote this.

Tomorrow I’ll have to remember I have carrots in the garden and do something with them, too.

Here’s what it looked like before we nommed. Put whatever you like on it, just salt and pepper, Worcestershire, ponzu, soy, sour cream…what-have-you.

Happy making-do everyone! Don’t let anything go to waste and you may be surprised what you come up with.