Ellie Mae

Ellie Mae
Beautiful Ellie Mae

Freddie, the French Bulldog

Freddie, the French Bulldog
Lazing on a sunny afternoon

The artist

The artist
Ollie Mac

Ollie and Annie

Ollie and Annie
Azorean grandmother

Acrylics and watercolors

Acrylics and watercolors
Cannabis and sunflowers

Papa and Ollie Mac

Papa and Ollie Mac
Priorities, Baby

Acrylics and watercolors

Acrylics and watercolors
Hollyhocks

Mahlon Masling Blue

Mahlon Masling Blue
My friend and brother.

Mark's E-mail address

bellspringsmark@gmail.com

Sunday, April 29, 2018

None of the Above


I am conducting a rhetorical, one-question survey to my ever-discriminating and well-versed readers: Who is ultimately responsible for deciding what is served to you, at dinner most nights?

a) you alone
b) your significant other
c) you eat out a lot
d) you don’t eat “dinner,” as such
e) the warden 

The reason I ask is because after more than thirty years of being able to happily (!) check “b,” I find that now the answer is “a.” I have always been more than willing to both help cook, and cook meals by myself, but in most instances, it was still Gluten-Free Mama who furnished me with the fine print, not to mention the ingredients.

Now, due to “circumstances beyond my station’s control,” I find it to my advantage to do some-if not all-of my dinner planning. Otherwise, it’s popcorn or the ever-popular bean burritos. The reason is simply that GF Mama has enough on her plate at this moment, regardless of whether or not I am ready to assume this responsibility.

Asking her to continue in her accustomed role, would be tantamount to me saying: Though you are on an extremely limited diet and can only eat a small percentage of what you are used to eating, I still want you to go ahead and plan all sorts of savory dishes for me, so that I don’t miss out. 

Or not.

Savory odors permeated the house for hours...
Actually, The highest point of my week was preparing roasted veggies (red onion, zucchini squash, mushrooms, bell pepper), mixed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, over gluten-free spaghetti, and having GF Mama indulge herself. 

Maybe that is a tad too flamboyant. Let’s say that she was thrilled to be able to taste the peppers. These side effects are a nuisance, though not unexpected.

The key to my culinary planning success is to keep a random assortment of available ingredients, something easier for a guy who lives on a farm, and to not wait until it’s dinner time, to start figuring out what’s on the menu. I’ve tried that and found that translates to: Go to de box, get de sour dough bread, and wrap two slices around some sharp cheddar cheese, with mustard.

By dinner time I am too tired and usually too famished to be starting the process. The other morning I prepped some veggies, roasted them and set them aside, so that all I had to do when dinnertime approached, was boil water for spaghetti and put a green salad together.

When I space dinner out so that it’s too late to get something out of the freezer, I can always go the sandwich/popcorn route. Besides, the closer to summer we get, the more I will have available from the farm. Fresh tomato sandwiches!

Though I now must purchase organic chickens from the market, we just got more than 100  “peepers” on-farm, and that will amount to filled freezers, in another ten to twelve weeks.

So now, whenever I venture down to the metropolitan area of Willits, or even Ukiah, I go with store list in hand. This allows me to better assume the role I was so accustomed to seeing from Gluten-Free Mama. I always wondered how she managed to be so organized, and then I found out for myself. It's do or starve.

The thing is, I can convince myself that popcorn is an adequate meal, a thousand times easier than she could convince three sons, of the same thing. 

Go figure.

The menu below was not created prior to the fact; rather, it represents a work in constant progress. I recreated this one from memory, a curious assortment of meticulously planned and executed culinary masterpieces, balanced by fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, last-second desperation-mode meals.

Menu: Week of April 22-28th

Sunday: Cheeseburger with green salad, banana

Monday: Barbecued chicken with teriyaki sauce, rice, Granny Smith apple

Tuesday: Leftover teriyaki chicken and rice, cherry fruit cocktail

Wednesday: Tater tots, green salad, Granny Smith apple

Thursday: Roasted veggies in olive oil/balsamic vinegar, over spaghetti, green salad, pineapple bits/fruit cocktail

Friday: Leftover spaghetti, roasted veggies, teriyaki chicken, apple

Saturday: Popcorn with butter and salt

(And don’t be all that dazzled by the copious representation of fresh and packaged fruit. I’m just coming off a six-week-long chocolate binge, helped immeasurably by the fact that I live a half-hour away from town and that I hate to drive. If I can hold strong while in town, I'm home-free...)




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