So...whats for dinner?

Lacey, love your story

Here is a story of my own. My sister's former husband is 1/2 Japanese. I often heard her say " Oya soomee na sigh" to her husband as she went up the stairs at night to go to sleep. She told me it meant "Goodnight. " As an RN in a teaching hospital in Boston many years ago, I thought that it would be nice to say that to my Japanese patients who only spoke Japanese, when I worked 3-11pm. So I said it for a few years. I was met with silence, so I thought I was pronouncing it wrong. When I asked my sister for help, she said "Don't ever say that!!!!! That is the type of goodnight that a wife says to her husband as she goes up the stairs in her nightgown and slyly winks at him" I missed that part.

When I lived in Georgia and Atlanta everyone would nod or wave as you drove past.

It is too hot. I'm defrosting cooked shrimp to serve with cocktail sauce, cottage cheese, avocados, cold water and tomatoes, and I'm bringing it for lunch tomorrow too.

Susan, lol, it was a hamburger for me!

Thank you Susan, every recipe you have shared has been too delicious!

My Salad is really good an d easy----1 tub of organic baby arugula, 1 cup of dried cranberries, 1 cup of crumbled Feta Cheese and about 1 1/4 cups (dry) of ORZO pasta and pine nuts to taste (abt 1/2 cup)

Cook the orzo and rinse in cool water till cool. Combine all ingredients and then blend 1/4 cup lemon juice with 1/2 cup olive oil. Pour over the top and toss.

You can use less Orzo if you want it to b e less pasta...... SO GOOD, and pretty "clean eating" I think. My cranberries were from the health food store and sweetened with apple juice only.

Red I am on the coast in Rhode island

http://www.farmfresh.org/food/farm.php?farm=3119

Special, that sounds awesome!

Red, that salad sounds delicious and right up my alley! Thanks for detailing it for us.

Susan, I'm glad that you are getting "familial tour relief" while your body works on feeling better. Hope you do so very soon! And I am not surprised at the eye rolls at the book suggestions....that is the kind of idea I would offer and receive the same response from the younger generation.

Re: the greetings issue.....I should mention that in our little town, many people walk, run, bike all the time (even last winter after the storms....I used to see them going by while out shoveling), and almost everyone greets one another, which is why we were so struck by the absence of that in P-town. Also, both DH and I are half Italian and I know how much DH wishes he could speak that language. He recently suggested we go to classes for it. I can just imagine how he would be freaking out the walkers with newly learned phrases.

Bedo, your story was hysterical!

My lunch today with former colleagues was great. We met at our friend's home in Cohasset and went to an outdoor restaurant on the harbor there. It was lovely, and the food was exceptional for "patio food". I had a grilled chicken breast sandwich on brioche with avocado spread, bacon, tomato, red onion and lettuce. It was accompanied by a very large and tasty baby greens salad with balsamic dressing. Others had caesar salad with chicken and one friend had fish tacos (made with cod) that looked wonderful. The rain held off and a nice breeze from the water made for a delightful long dining and catch-up afternoon.

I got home after the dinner hour and by 8pm was a bit hungry, so just had some bing cherries and a biscotti. DH had made himself an omelet for dinner.

We were supposed to go boating with friends on the North Shore tomorrow, but the weather looks threatening, so we have postponed the trip....and I have a mile long list of things to get done here before we head back to NH Thursday after my MO appt. Feeling relieved to have some spare time....and it will allow us to spend a bit of it at the gym...if I have enough energy for that. Am hoping my notable physical fatigue has to do with this crazy travel frenzy and not anything else. Will probably have bloodwork done at MO appt., so that will let me know if anything is awry

We have a whole chicken brining, ready for the grill, but at the moment, it is raining hard out there. We may have to go to Plan B which involves either Wednesday Fish Night or a taco. My favorite Mexican restaurant does $1 tacos on Tuesday. Strangely, I have never been on that night. He must loose his financial shirt on Tuesdays, but I know he is trying to drum up some business. They haven't built a big enough clientele even though they are the real thing. Baffling to me.

The whole "hot dish" thing is so upper Midwest. We saw those a lot in Montana as well, a place with lots of really big families doing physical labor. I guess it is a way to fill bellies using as little expensive protein as possible.

I think your California burger sounds much better to me.

Here in our urban Somerville, locals actually do wave to each other as we pass while driving especially if you have to pull over a bit to let them pass on these very narrow streets. Not sure about greetings, but it happens quite frequently with the "older" crowd. So many older residents here are from Italian or Portugual that it must seem normal to them.

*susan*

Susan, when you say your Mexican restaurant is the "real deal," do you mean it does not serve Tex Mex? That's what most Americans want when they go to a Mexican restaurant. What we call Tex Mex. Burritos, fajitas, chimichangas, etc. The best Tex Mex we've ever eaten was in Texas, of all places! As with pizzas, I like the Tex Mex cooked at home better than what I get in the typical Tex Mex restaurant.

One of our neighbors here at Pine Hollow, a woman from Fargo, told me about a potato tots hot dish. It uses the frozen tater tots, ground meat, and, yes, cream of something soup. That should be carb fuel to keep some old-fashioned farm workers going for quite a while.

Susan, that fish place sounds wonderful. I think it would be my favorite restaurant among the local places. Good luck with that huge project.

We ate at an upscale Mexican restaurant many years ago. I don't remember where. It was very fancy and pricey with, of course, no vestige of Tex Mex on the menu. I think I had a beef dish. The memory isn't tagged with a Wow, but that's no reflection on the restaurant. Somehow the experience wasn't special.

My mini Keurig has been acting up, not wanting to brew a full cup of coffee. I went online and got some tips about what might be wrong and did a repair job using a straightened paper clip. Today it worked fine!

What to cook for dinner? Corn cut off the cob and cooked in a little butter with some diced red bell pepper. Steamed beets, peeled and sliced and sprinkled with vinegar. Sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. Cannot think of a meat that draws me to the freezer so maybe we'll just eat vegetarian.

My favorite is New Mexican food - much more American Indian influence & hotter chillies than Tex-Mex. Enchiladas for example are usually served flat - sort of like layering lasagna. Houston has 2.239 MILLION people, but only one Mexican restaurant that serves New Mexican food. They've had to add traditional Tex-Mex to their menu in order to survive. My son grew up on Tex-Mex w/lard so that's what he wants when he comes home for a visit. Now I can drag him to my New Mexican grill and we're both happy. Unfortunately it's 30 miles away and MapQuest just clocked the journey at 1 hour 10 minutes at 5pm, so I don't get there very often.

I love 'hot dishes'. Most of my leftovers end up w/a similar treatment now. Today was a rif on Laurie's chicken salsa. Leftover pork chops sliced like for stir fry, Hatch green chili stew, black beans, corn sliced off the cob.

They do lots of 'hot dishes' in Utah too, in addition to endless molded jello salads w/fruit, or occasionally vegetables.

Carole - you are so clever fixing your coffee pot.

Dinner tonight was grilled whole chicken, green beans, and a tortellini salad. On my way home from the client office, I decided that this is what I had to have, so a quick stop at Whole Foods for their 365 brand sun-dried tomatoes. All four pounds that I lost during the last cycle of Ibrance have found their way back home. I have mixed feelings. My oncologist will be pleased.

Minus, I have a whole roll of old black and white film of a pineapple sitting on the end of the ironing board in our NY kitchen. My mother wasn't much of a house keeper, so the ironing board was always open in the kitchen. My father returned from a business trip to Hawaii and brought this amazing thing! Of course, we had no idea when it was ripe, or how to cut it, or anything at all. The only pineapple we had ever eaten was canned. I actually have no memory of eating the thing; just its existence. The world has changed, but still, things that are eaten right where they have been grown the local way, are always the best.

*susan*

Minus, I LOVE New Mexico food too. I would be so happy to find a place that served it in the St. Louis area.

The only fruit I even remember eating as a kid was fruit cocktail from a can, applesauce and the occasional banana. However I do remember my great grandmother sitting in a rocking chair peeling and slicing apples for my cousin and me to eat while she read us a story. A nice memory.

Ditto to Minus's compliment. Gorgeous salad even with those molecules from the onions jumping about!

The weight "regain" sounds like a good thing, Susan.

All the veggies last night were delicious. The corn was sautéed in quite a bit of butter along with diced green chilis from the freezer and diced red bell pepper. Very pretty and the corn was very sweet. The fresh beets were delish and so were the cucumber and tomato. I had a little vinegar and olive oil on my veggies except for the corn and dh had his usual bottled Ken's creamy Vidalia dressing.

This morning we're headed to the gym and afterwards we'll probably have breakfast in town.

I played golf with a woman from one of the Dakotas who joked about all the varieties of jello salad. She said there was fierce competition among the women on whose jello salad was the best. I used to make a gazpacho gelatin salad that had a really good taste and was pretty served on lettuce. I have no idea which cookbook had that recipe. When I get home I may look for it. It was handy for making ahead when company was coming for dinner.

No inkling what dinner will be. Maybe I'll buy some Canadian walleye at Coburn's Supermarket in town.

Nance....WOW! Stunning salad plate! Looks like it belongs on the cover of a cookbook.

I absolutely love authentic food pix....ya know, not air brushed!

In NH this AM...trying to get up the energy for a good walk.....too much car travel, too little exercise this past week. Did see MO yesterday, and she agrees that my current summer "vacationing" is a bit too much for my energy level (surprise, surprise). The good news is that after we return from our stay with my widowed friend at the Vineyard, summer can get more lazy. Whew.....I need it.

Meanwhile, I received an email from the functional meds practice where I receive my allergy care that THEY ARE CLOSING!! Yikes! This is who prescribes and follows my new sublingual serum treatment, which is getting me through my allergy season well so far. Oh dear. So much for cutting edge medicine surviving the wrath of insurance cos.

Carole, I am so impressed with your bike rides! Not sure I would do well with those regional carbo loaded meals you described (I can't return to the last page for the full "hot" name lest I lose this post).

I am poorly versed these days in Mexican food and the true blue vs regional variations. I loved any kind of Mexican or Tex Mex when it arrived in Boston many years ago. Then we lived two blocks from Casa Romero, a very nice Mexican restaurant in Back Bay with a varied menu and really hot salsa we used to love. Sadly, a return there for an anniversary proved disappointing...but maybe our tastes are a bit more refined. In another post I'll share an interesting dining experience we had years ago with the owner, Leo Romero.

Add me to the canned fruit cocktail, iceberg lettuce list!! And canned peaches, pineapple, and grapefruit. Are we dating ourselves with these admissions??

At a restaurant recently, DH ordered a caesar salad and it was made with iceberg lettuce. We were both surprised (read, salad snob horrified) and mentioned it to the waitress. She replied that he could have requested romaine had he preferred that. Hmmmm....

One thing I miss about iceberg is how easy it is to clean....and always recall an old bf teaching me how to easily remove that core. He was gone before the "new" lettuces entered the picture, but I always held on to that tip for whenerver iceberg entered my house.

Great news! Last night as I was packing and doing a bit of outdoor maintenance (we just had a stone path installed on the side of our house, and I "needed" to cut back some ferns so I could walk it), DH, with very little instruction, made "dinner"....BLTs and chips. Everyone starts somewhere! I loved it, and it helped us get on the road while it was still light out.

I'd better get out to walk...tempus fugit!

auntienance… this looks amazing!!!!