Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

Leftover lamb meatballs in a tomato, fennel and orzo sauce tonight.

Home made pizza last night at a friend's house for his 60th birthday. He lost his phone paddleboarding with his son on the Silver river so I guess that he got a new smartphone for his birthday. LOL.

On Friday we made pasta with ground pork and peppers.

 

Ground pork with green beans, cilantro, garlic, peppers and coriander seeds served over rice.

 

My wife is working late tonight with a Saturday basketball game and a beloved cousin visiting next week.

I was going to make cacio e pepe because I have a block of pecorino romano and my wife doesn't like that cheese. But my son is not a big fan of cheese either so I am making clam linguini instead. And cacio e pepe sounds really simple to make but it is very finicky to get right. You have to have your A game on.

 

My wife made split pea soup to have tomorrow and I made chicken tinga for soft tacos. Also made pickled red onion and bought some avocados for topping. Also have some cabbage and queso fresca.

Made the chicken tinga in anticipation of victory margaritas after the Gator vs Texas basketball game. Worked out well.

 

Well we saved out some of the split pea soup for lunch and froze the rest. My MIL has repeatedly reminded us that she has a frozen chicken in her freezer so I got it out to smoke it for chicken enchiladas. Turns out that it was smoked before we froze it. LOL. I often smoke two chickens at the same time because it is just a tiny bit more work. It is nearly defrosted and I will shred it. We make our own green sauce with tomatillos, serrano peppers, onion and garlic. We might add a little cilantro or dried epazote.

 

We have a visitor coming for a few days: One of my wife's cousins that used to live in Woodside (near Palo Alto) that we would visit and go wine touring with. He now lives in Tuscany after selling his double lot house in Woodside and also selling his mother's corner lot house in Palo Alto where he got half of the proceeds. We did see him over the summer in Cleveland of all places.

Making posole verde ahead of time for the visit and making Tex-Mex tacos for tonight.

 

Our visitor is stuck in Atlanta by airplane. If I was him I would rent a car and drive down because tomorrow will also be fubar. Roads should be OK as long as you know how to drive on slick highways.

Going to warm up half of the posole verdi I made yesterday for dinner tonight.

Speaking of icy and dangerous roads here is a story that Bill might appreciate.

Every holiday season my new wife and I would go to the wintry north to see my parents (just outside Champaign, IL) and her parents (just outside Cincinnati). Driving back to Gainesville from Cincinnati on I-75 approaching the KY-Tenn border we saw all of the semis pulling off into the rest area. I was driving our 1978 F-150 stripper pick-up and my wife was asleep. If you know that road just after the rest area it is a long downhill with a sharp left at the bottom. I was going down it and a State Trooper was turning his gumball lights off and on in the median. I starting thinking that things were not good and tapped the brakes and skidded. Yikes! I gently slowed as much as I could and did make it around the curve at the bottom. There were no cars behind me for miles and miles. For good reason.

A few miles later the roads were good and we made it safely home.

I thank the troopers for tipping me off. Good guys. They are not out there to give tickets. They are out there to make it safe.

 

Chicken enchiladas tonight made with the meat from a chicken I had smoked and then froze. Chicken that gets cooked and then frozen doesn't have the best texture but it tastes OK. Too mushy.

 

I used to show and judge camellias. I couple of more things to take into account. Pruning after flowering is spot on but also wait until after the last probably time for a freeze. If you prune, get new growth and that freezes you will not have a good flowering season. Camellias bloom on new growth.

My favorite Aussie things to grow are cycads. I have some Macrozamia communis that I grew from seed and some Boweinia serrulata that I got from Bain around Orlando many years ago.

Back in 1992 I went to a conference in Sydney and spent two extra weeks there. I had a friend that was nurseryman and a cycad collector and he gave me the correct package to mail back seeds legally with inspection and quarantine. He knew that I liked to hike in the hills. I found some ripe Lepidozamia peroffskyana seeds that I collected (legally) and some not quite ripe Macrozamia moorei that I left because they were not ripe. It was before everybody had a smartphone with GPS so I couldn't give an exact location for where I found the seeds but I could describe the location pretty well. Cycad seed collectors want to know EVERYTHING about seeds collected in the wild. Some of it might be to make sure that it wasn't a CITES violation but mostly it is about the genetic content.

Funny story about talking about this with my PhD advisor that was also at the conference. When I talked about doing some seed collecting he was telling me that it was illegal and then I told him about exactly how I was sending the seeds back. He was impressed.

 

Tonight is grouper with a macadamia and panko crust, potato gratin with charred and peeled poblanos to make a raja, and asparagus.