Easter with a twist

And a fair-to-middlin’ Easter dinner it was.

This was Easter dinner: Ham, potato salad, asparagus, pineapple, deviled eggs.

But it wasn’t just your ordinary Easter dinner. Oh, no, I was not going to do something as routine as THAT.

So I glazed the ham with char siu sauce and grilled it. I sprinkled the fresh pineapple slices with curry powder and grilled them (I was rummaging  for my Jamacian jerk seasoning, ran across the curry powder first, decided that would do nicely). And I tossed the asparagus spears with olive oil, lemon juice, and lemon zest, grilled them as well, then dusted them with freshly grated Parmigiano.

The potato salad was normal, which is to say, outstanding. The eggs I deviled with some of the leftover dressing from the potato salad. Bad choice. Won’t do that again.

I remember this room! It’s a kitchen!

Yum. Hit the spot. At least two out of three did.

And tonight is the first time I’ve been in mine, other than to grab something out of the fridge or make toast or nuke something, in more than a week.

That’s just wrong.

Jaysus H. Roosevelt Christ, y’all. This has been a WEEK! And I am some kind of proud that it is over and I survived, and I finally had time to go to the liquor store and restock on red wine, and I have, for the first time in more than a week, not One Damn Thing I have to do tonight, and I have not even turned on the television but am listening to Eric Clapton blasting out of the Bose.

Life’s looking up. Particularly as I had comfort food for dinner.

Cooking again. A little.

I did actually cook last night. Sorta. I made tomato soup and grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches, and they were damn good, thankyouverymuch. And tonight is going to be meatballs in bolognese sauce, with risotto (because I just don’t feel like pasta) and maybe even some roasted carrots.

And today at lunch I ate a brussels sprout that I liked.

Fall. Sunshine. Park. Grill.

This was not dinner:

Full Moon Bridge at Garvan Woodland Gardens

It was, however, one good reason I had a good appetite for dinner, of which we have no photographs because, well, we just don’t. And it was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was good.

Oh, Lawd…..

…I’m SO full.

And I didn’t even take pictures because, y’know, I was already a half a bottle of red wine (Alamos Malbec) down, and by the time dinner was done, we fell upon it like a pack of ravenous wolves and there was quickly nothing left to photograph.

Well, I exaggerate. There are two three-quarter-pound burger patties still there. And some potato salad. And a smidgen of beans.

Picnic fare

Well, I did something I don’t generally do. I took a good recipe, an old standby recipe, and I tinkered with it.

But y’know what? It’s pretty good.

Decided I was going to make potato salad to go with the brisket (which Kate took with her) and the slaw tomorrow. Was a little short of potatos (cooking for 11) so I threw a couple of sweet potatos in the pot to boil.

Forgot that sweet potatos just keep getting softer the longer you boil ‘em. And they boil more quickly than russets do. So the sweet potatos were mushy.

H’mmm. OK. Well, the sweet potatos should just cream up in the sauce. Which will make the sauce sweeter. So how ’bout if I go up on the mustard….and just for good measure, add an almost-caramelized red onion to the mix? And, oh by the way, how ’bout if I throw in three or four cloves of minced garlic at the last minute when the onions are almot ready to come off?

So I did that. Made up my usual mayo-mustard-ketchup-paprika-seasoned salt-sweet pickle relish dressing. Went up on the mustard. Added the onions/garlic. Stirred everything up. Sweet potatos creamed up nicely. Tasted it. Too sweet. Added more mustard and a shot of wine vinegar. Perfecto! Even Child C, who looked at it suspiciously because it looked different from my usual, tasted and allowed it was good.

I’m ba-ack

And will be happy enough if I don’t have to look at I-40 (or I-30, for that matter) for a while, but I suspect I’ll be back to LR at least, next week. No matter, I’m home from the road-trip-from-hell (I had an encounter with Texas’ finest; ’nuff said), and here for, I hope, at least the duration of this week. And the ledge is starting to make going-home noises, so we’ll have some respite soon. I think. Maybe.

Came home and resorted to comfort food. It had been, of course, a road trip junk food week, as I don’t like to stop and go in and sit down and eat when I’m traveling unless it’s somewhere I Really Love (like, say, when I’m going to Fayetteville and want to stop by Feltner’s What-A-Burger in Russelville). And there were no exceptional meals on the trip (I’ve never had an exceptional meal in Texas, except in McAllen, where I tasted mole sauce for the first time and fell in love).

Anyhow. It was seafood on Monday night in Dallas, which was eminently forgettable, not entirely because I had had three Most Excellent (and they ought to have been, at 11 bucks apiece) Martinis in the bar at the Westin Galleria in Dallas. Glad someone else was picking up my bar tab for two of those three. But needless to say, I don’t remember much about dinner upstairs at the Oceanaire, except it was something that started with a K and was over mashed potatos and grilled asparagus.

The next day, I splurged and ordered room service breakfast. Except I ordered French toast (nothing like sugar OD for a hangover), and they brought me what the menu says was a French breakfast, which was fruit, granola and croissants. With creme fraiche. Which I ate, because I was starving. It was probably better for me, anyway. But I am here to report that the Westin Galleria provides NO coffee except Starbucks’ French Roast, and I don’t like much Starbucks at all, and nobody’s French roast.  Sigh.

Lunch Tuesday was a Tex-Mex buffet of some sort. Forgettable. Except they did have pretty good fajitas, and some good salads. Some really half-assed salads, too — a roasted corn salsa was just that — roasted corn. Period. Didn’t have so much as a grain of salt to it. Now, I like my roasted corn as much as anyone, but if you’re not going to season it, you ought to at least serve it to me warm. But there was a good guacamole, and a good salad that was black-eyed peas and string beans and pico de gallo, and there was a good jicama slaw.

Missed dinner. Drove back to Little Rock from Dallas, junk food stops in Sulphur Springs and Hope, got in to LR, had to stay at a different hotel than usual became the one where I usually stay was full, and wound up ordering room service because that was what was available. I had a choice between Pizza Hut and some Chinese carryout joint. Went Chinese.

The fried rice was OK. Barely. Egg rolls were good. Sesame chicken was sweet & sour chicken with sesame seeds on it.

Breakfast at the LaQuinta (the LaQuinta is NOT In the same league as the Westin, I can testify) was sad. Line was long. Waffle iron wasn’t working right. No hot water to fix instant grits with. No fresh fruit. I wound up with a cup of yogurt and a bowl of Raisin Bran. And bad coffee.

And the room smelled bad. I’ll not be staying at the LaQuinta again.

So I came home, and the kid has cleaned out the fridge. I could’ve thawed out butternut squash pasta sauce from last week. But I decided I deserved potato salad, so I whipped myself up a sizeable serving thereof.

It’s gone now. And I feel better.

Trivia tomorrow night, if I don’t crash and burn first. Will cook something Friday; not sure what. I have a Circassian Chicken recipe that looks interesting. I have some really pretty boneless thick pork chops. I have a pork tenderloin, but I don’t know what that wants to be  yet.

But my kitchen misses me. And I miss my kitchen. Will be back to y’all with new adventures, soon.

Tell  y’mama ‘n ‘em to e-mail me recipe suggestions.