So...whats for dinner?

Ordered out from a new tapas bar last night for a paella mixta: seafood (salmon, shrimp, NZ mussels.), chicken, and chorizo. No soccarat, though: it arrived in a foil takeout pan, and I sincerely doubt whether it would have been made to order (the menu also included mariscos & Valenciana, as well as squid ink, which would have needed a separate pan--I suspect they just make a very large batch and when an order is placed, add the necessary ingredients). I could have removed it and put it into a preheated skillet to create a soccarat, but we were just too hungry to wait for that. Delicious, though, and otherwise authentic: found a couple of saffron threads in there.

Tonight will likely be bison hanger steak with whatever veggies I pull from the crisper.

My younger sister loves her air fryer and uses it almost every night. Her dh does not eat veggies except breaded and fried. She cooks pork chops, chicken, French fries, sweet potato fries. All without oil and quickly. A convection oven would work the same since the air fryer works like a small convection oven. My sister does not enjoy cooking. Quick is good and nothing fancy. She struggles with weight control despite being physically active, doing chores like handling bales of hay. She and her dh have horses and beef cows.

Minus, my spiralizer has never been used. I bought it on a whim (ordered it online) when everybody was talking about their spiralized veggies. It is currently covered with a cloth and stuck up on a shelf in the laundry room. Soon after it arrived, we departed for the summer and by the time of our return my interest in it had died.

Love the new avatar, Nancy!

Tonight I cast-iron-seared bison hanger steak, with chimichurri (bottled, Whole Foods) on the side. Braised asparagus with lemon & garlic, steamed rainbow carrots with cinnamon & honey for me, roasted smashed multicolor (Yukon Gold, purple, yellow Finn) fingerling potatoes with fresh rosemary & olive oil for Gordy. Accompanied by 2010 Trinitas (Napa) Old Vine Zin.

Sharon, at DD's urging, is wanting to reduce the meat in our diet. So I made veggie burgers. The basic recipe was found here. Since I had time, used dried black beans to make veggie burgers.

And after we finished eating, we went up to the car dealer section of town, about a 5 minute drive from home, and bought a Subaru Forester. I guess the dealers get referral fees from the loan companies as the amount the dealer would reduce the price was much greater when buying with a car loan than just writing a check for the full amount. I looked at the contract and there is no penalty for paying the loan off early, so I will probably do that in the next month or so. I hate loans on things that drop in value.

So, until I decide what to do with the Volvo with the broken engine, I'm back to 7 cars. Sigh.

I have an endoscope like device that I can use to look inside car engines and I figured out what happened to the engine. A spark plug broke and the debris from that put a hole through a piston. Getting the engine out of the car and fixing things is easy (and only about $300 worth of parts).. Putting the engine back in is more of a problem. Two people can do the work in a few hours, but with just one person it takes a couple of days and it's not terribly safe. I helped my friend put an engine in his truck a couple of months ago and afterwards his back was hurting for over a week. I guess being 71 does that. Anyway, I don't want my friend to be sore like that because of me.

As for dinner tonight--I'm not sure yet.

Yes, 7 cars, but I want very much to get it back down to "just" six cars. Three of them are antiques, three are daily drivers and the one is going to be sold very soon.

Has anyone heard from Susan?

Dinner tonight was black beans cooked with a fair amount of chili powder and some peppers from the garden, quinoa, cabbage and onion tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper and rice vinegar, cheese and some salsa.

I used less salt than I would have liked and made up for it with extra peppers. It was pretty spicy, but for us, it wasn't "deadly". :-)

En route home from my mani-pedi in a sudden snow squall (hey, considering what you New Englanders are going through, that's nothing). stopped off to pick up a few things--soda bread for Bob, chopped liver for our housekeeper (she loves it), great big half-sour pickles for me and Krispy Kremes for Gordy (and me). The marinated Tuscan-style chicken thighs on the hot bar looked great, so I brought some home. Reheated them for dinner, along with lemon-garlic broccolini (I used Sicilian orange sea salt, chili flakes and lemon zest). For a starch I was going to nuke some Seeds of Change quinoa-brown rice blend; but since it too was garlic flavored (as is the half roll of polenta in the fridge), I figured I'd go full-on Italian and did spaghetti cacio e pepe instead. Used small amts. of truffle butter, a few twists of the black pepper mill, sprinkled a bit of black truffle oil and grated a small amt. (too small, according to recipes on YouTube I consulted afterward) of Pecorino Romano. It (and a NYT article by Frank Bruni how when he visits Rome to compare their emerging turmoil to ours, he goes for comforting constancy--pasta alla grecia, aka an eggless carbonara, or cacio e pepe).

A You Tube video showed how to make the "base" for it--huge handfuls (at least 2 c.) of grated Pecorino, about 1/4 c. of freshly ground black pepper, and cold water dribbled in while mashing it all up with an immersion blender till it made a huge blob of paste about twice the density of pesto. Then take a portion of drained cooked spaghetti, add about a ladleful of the reserved salted starchy pasta-cooking water and at least 1/4 stick of sweet butter and a generous knob of the cacio paste and stir it together till everything is coatad evenly. Then grate more Pecorino until your pacemeker has to kick in.

One month from Friday I will be on an Alitalia flight for nearly a week in Rome. A little touring, a little legal lecture, a tour of the courts and a whole lotta eatin' goin' on. Can hardly wait!

Eric, you'll love that Forester. Hope you got one with EyeSight and blind-spot monitoring. My Outlook has the former but not the latter--it's the only feature our '11 Fusion Hybrid has that the '14 Outback lacks,

I bought the air fryer. It was on sale at Sam's Club and cost about $100. Actually it's the same model that I bought about a year ago and returned. I made room for it by moving the old unused breadmaker out to the "gym," which is no longer the gym but just an outbuilding that houses the 2nd refrigerator, the empty chest freezer and a lot of other stuff. I set the breadmaker on a shelf next to the unused electric pressure cooker. I hope they get along!

I put the Kitchen Aid into the space in a lower cabinet that the breakmaker had occupied. NOW there's room for the air fryer on the counter and the quilted cover that protected the Kitchen Aid fits the fryer. Ta Dah!

I have used the fryer successfully two nights in a row. Breaded pork chops, the larger fatty chops with flavor. They came out brown and crisp. Last night was a whole chicken and it was a success, too. What I like most is that the "mess" is contained and the cleanup really easy. The 5 lb chicken cooked in 40 minutes, 20 minutes on each side with a 20 minute rest. The fryer is reasonably quiet.

I may use the leftover chicken in a pasta casserole for dinner. DH is recovering from surgery yesterday on his ear for a skin cancer (skin from his chest for a graft) so he would probably appreciate comfort food.

Bummer on the lost post, Lacey.

Ha ha Carole -your poor pressure cooker is probably glad for the company! Lacey should send you hers so they could become "The Isle of Forgotten Appliances.." I have a rice cooker I can contribute.

Had planned on making a roast for dinner but I had a slight problem as the Crock-Pot I had for 11 years died. So tonight was dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Will cook the roast for tomorrow night in my new Crock-Pot.

Out of town so not posting much, but DD is safely home. Had security for off-resort forays, which made me feel better. Except, of course, for the fact that they needed security..

Special, I'm glad you can "breathe again" :-)

Magari, ever try marinating cod or sturgeon in sake lees? Really great. (Tough to find, but some Asian groceries have them as sheets of paste, not unlike shiro miso--and it can freeze forever, just break off & thaw what you need & dilute it).

For Pie Day, I ended up eating a creme brulee mini-tartlet. (Dinner was lentil-veggie soup with three kinds of grated cheese: pecorino Romano, Parm-Regg., and black truffle pecorino Toscano which had turned to stone but grated pretty easily). Today I stopped in to Hoosier Mama en route from my labs & Prolia--but since the only cream pie I wanted was chocolate, available only in either a large slice or a full-size pie, I chose a small "Jeffersonville:" maple pecan with bourbon and drizzled with chocolate. Brought it home and cut myself a piece about the size of a cookie. Intense!

My nephew invited me to join them for an anniversary dinner for his wife's parents. They are from Hong Kong, though they have lived in Northern CA now for 15 years. We went to a restaurant in Houston's main China Town. It was good that they all spoke both Mandarin & Cantonese because I had no idea what the waitress was saying - or for that matter what they ordered. There was a crispy chicken dish, fish w/tofu, duck, greens w/garlic, beef with very spicy peppers, and several other things. Everything was delicious.

Dinner last night was steak fajitas. The steak was London broil (I read that this is not a cut of meat but a preparation, but the label said London broil!) seasoned and cooked in the air fryer to medium rare and sliced very thin. Bought corn tortillas, black beans cooked with Rotel tomatoes, guacamole and sour cream. Could have left the steak out and the combo of black beans and avocado would still have been satisfying.

I bought a recipe book (Of course!!!) for air fryer and downloaded it to a Kindle app on my PC. I'm reading it now. Like most recipe books, 80 per cent of it will not be useful.

Making corned beef and cabbage tomorrow!