carrot soup

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True Story.  I made a super-secret pinboard of food I wanted to eat while Z was out of town.  Yea…hhhh.  I did that and am clearly somewhat embarrassed but it’s out there now and I will live with it. Anyway, I figured I could dream a little dream and make myself dinners that Z would likely not want to eat and have super-amazing super-chic non-boy friendly sandwiches for work brown-bag lunches.

Day 1 – I pulled out all the stops. This is really saying something since I got up at 3 AM for an airport run.  I made myself a sweet little sandwich of a baguette spread in butter and topped with fresh creamy mozzarella and roasted red peppers.  Not too shabby and supremely tasty.  I had bought artichoke hearts to put on it and they were forlornly forgotten in the pantry.  For dinner I cooked up a little pot of beautifully orange carrot soup.  Dense and thick and warmed with the spice of coriander and cumin.  I dolloped on a scoop of greek yogurt thinned with a little olive oil, lemon, and garlic (this recipe eyeballed and minus the cuke).  Oven roasted chickpeas roasted with cumin on top.  Totally amazing and if you like soup I recommend this recipe-kind of vegetarian and fairly healthful.  I even had leftovers to take the following day.  IMG_3160

Day 2 – I ate my leftover soup as I watched flight tracker and the landing of Z’s plane in Bangkok while lunching with some co-workers and Z’s mom and grandparents.  Clearly something existential happened in that moment for me because that landing broke the wheels off my wagon.  For dinner?  Takeout burger from Outback…  I then proceeded to eat comfort foods like eggs and pizza most nights for dinner (with a few notable exceptions.) Oh, that is other than Friday night when I ate bagel chips with cream cheese-for dinner.  So, out of the chic and into the pure comfort of fried eggs and toast.  You know, I think I’ll make him a pot of that carrot soup one of these days.

preparation

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so the backstory is this, Z has a job where the people around him travel all the time, and everywhere.  They go to Africa and southeast Asia most often with some Canada thrown in now and again.  He never really either ‘has’ to go or ‘gets’ to go.  Depending how you look at it.  This time he did.  He was asked to go to Bangkok, Thailand for a marathon software developing session called hackathon.   We consulted with Shands and the transplant clinic first for the ‘all clear’ and when he got that, we moved into an appointment with a travel doc (where Z got a Typhoid shot), a trip to the mall for a few new clothes and a trip down the sample aisle at Target.  All this to say, I was both good and bad with the whole situation.  What I mean by this is, it was hard to send him off for two main reasons.  1.  I wasn’t going.  2.  I wasn’t going.  And by that I mean, I didn’t ‘get’ to go and how can I take care of him if he gets sick and do you know how far it is to Bangkok-it’s a fierce time difference of 13 hours during daylight savings time.  It was easy to send him off for the opportunity of a lifetime.  He would get the chance to flex some work muscles and see what and how other people are doing their jobs.  It would give him a shot in the arm (in more ways than one) of excitement about work and the craft of it all. lastsupper So, as the trip loomed with a 3AM wake up call on Monday we went out to brunch at Cask & Larder on Sunday after church for a final hand-crafted meal.  We feasted.  I, on a gin cocktail with fernet branca, lemon juice, and grapefruit bitters alongside a seven day cured pastrami with cipollini mushrooms, brussels sprouts and a fried egg.  I have this new thing for bitters.  They are so …bitter.  The meat was amazing and the onions-meltingly sweet and tart with some kind of agro-dolce vinegar thing going on.  He, on a blue corn tamale with scrambled eggs, skirt steak and chicharrones.  Delightful way to relax and get ready for his upcoming adventure.

toasted

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while it might feel like every meal we eat is outside of our house, that wouldn’t really be true.  Z has often commented that I should write about the everyday, the failures, the bland and the boring.  I do feel that as a general rule we are eating pretty well, both at home and outside of it.  We cook good food (most of the time) and eat at a fairly high level.  I will also say I’m not above a hot dog or McDonalds because that would be a lie.  All that said, we all love a good grilled cheese sandwich and I have kind of lamented the fact that there isn’t a grilled cheese place here in town.  Ah, but now there is.  Toasted opened recently in the Winter Park (where else) area and sports a menu filled with grilled cheeses of all sorts (except a Wonder bread and Kraft Single) so we stopped in one night for dinner.  It is a cute place with nice cute decor, a swiss-cheesy treatment on the left side wall and a periodic table of cheese on the right wall.  It does make me wonder if the designer who made the periodic table even likes cheese as they spelled Manchego (Manchengo!?) wrong.  I love me some good spelling (and grammar.)  gettoastedI did really enjoy the box graters that they had turned into a light fixture-junk gypsy style.

I ordered the blackberry melt-fontina cheese, applewood smoked bacon, blackberry mash and arugula on some kind of nondescript white bakery loaf.  It was really good with the berries a nice sweet foil against the earthiness of the fontina.  It might be sacrilege to say this but I think I didn’t even need the bacon.  Z had a ‘forever fall’ sandwich with white cheddar, roasted sweet potatoes, and apple chutney on levain bread.   These sandwiches were tasty and imaginative.  I’m not sure I couldn’t do this at home but I probably wouldn’t.  Good old American grilled cheese with a bowl of steamy tomato soup will probably remain the standard with the occasional cheddar and tomato slice standing in the gap.

 

maya grill

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on with the adventure eating!  In our continuing efforts to refine and reduce our possessions we spent a Saturday sorting and packing up items we wanted to divest ourselves of.  Around five we decided to reward ourselves with a fun dinner.  We didn’t plan ahead at all and decided it would be nice to get on Disney property so we got online to look around.  I had been wanting to try Maya Grill for a while and when we called for a reservation they could get us in so we headed over.  It is located at the Coronado Springs resort which is a Disney-style riff on Mexico.  The restaurant is dimly lit with some fun faux torches lighting the path into the ‘temple’ of eating.mayagrill  Our server quickly brought us some crazy-fun margarita jello shots as an amuse.  Lucky girl got to eat both hers and his.  They had a tang of tequila and salty lime.  Also quickly arriving was a basket of fresh chips with two salsas-one green and one red.  I liked the red and he liked the green. I ordered shrimp tacos and they were delish!  Crisply battered shrimp with chipotle crema and crunchy slaw.  Z had a humongous slab of salmon on a bed of roasted potatoes and squash.  We finished off the meal with yummy flan.  I don’t know when I went from hating to loving flan.  It’s so creamy and luscious.  It was very solid for Disney food and we enjoyed the flavors and our evening out.

break-up dinner

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IMG_3101the latest fallout from the fall (not the original fall, just last fall) was the breakup of our small group.  We had ebbed and flowed with these folks for a year or two, surviving the cross-country move of the original leaders, the finish of an internship, a work transfer, a baby and strangely, more than that even.  But, this time we decided to call it quits.  It isn’t you, it’s me and all that.  It’s funny how something like this makes you wonder, did I talk too much?  Not enough?  It was amicable enough that we felt like we should all go out for an evening on the town.  Something easy, like bowling.  No, bowling isn’t easy.  You’d think it would be, but it isn’t.  Too expensive, too hard to get a reservation, too many people wearing the same shoes.  So, in the end we went out for dinner, and to a new place.  New to me and Z anyway.  Benihana.  Have you been there?  It’s cook-driven entertainment eating where the cook chats you up while you sit waiting for food that I felt was actually cooked a bit too long but was tasty in that I-drive kinda way.   I ordered the teriyaki steak, maybe a little safe but I don’t care.  I wanted the comfort of the familiar in the end moments.  Z had the chicken.  They over deliver with side dishes-funny fried onion soup, sauteed shrimp, salad with house dressing, fried rice.  I could have done without all those sides and just had the beef with some rice.  It was good to see everyone and enjoy the time together, which is really what good relationships are all about.