On Monday, April 22, 2024 we celebrated the first night of Passover. Our Seder plate included lettuce, parsley, charoses (apples, walnuts, wine), horseradish, an egg, and a lamb bone.
We went through the blessings, read the story about the flight from Egypt, and ate the traditional foods. Then we moved on to our festive dinner which included matzoh ball soup, grilled lamb, broccoli, mashed potatoes, and homemade macaroons for dessert.
Bucatini is a thick strand of pasta with a hole in it, sort of like long spaghetti tubes. This bucatini was thicker than I like but we were low on pasta and the strands went well with the sauce. I started the sauce from the basics of onion, garlic, tomato paste, oregano, and red pepper flakes. I added a can of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes and a can of fire-roasted petite diced tomatoes. After simmering for maybe 45 minutes I corrected for salt and tamped down the overly bright sauce with a little fish sauce.
Now that I am home again from the hospital it is so great to eat something with seasoning! The hospital did have a hamburger as a lunch selection but the idea of a really low fat, overcooked hamburger with no seasoning was just too horrific to contemplate.
John did his usual super job grilling the hamburgers between medium and medium rare. I am looking forward to getting back to preparing our menus and sous cheffing in the kitchen soon!
I am back in the hospital trying to shake this bout of pneumonia. There are many unenjoyable things that go on in a hospital—being awaken multiple times during the night to check on vitals, draw blood, and fix the IV machine whose alarm is pretty alarming.
Another unenjoyable part is the food. The sound of the dishes of the day are sometimes quite enticing, mushroom risotto, pad Thai, or chicken enchilada. The taste, though is disappointing. Everything is cooked with a minimum of fat and no salt. So basically everything is flavorless.
One of my lunch choices was a tuna salad sandwich with a salad, celery and carrot sticks, a couple of unsalted saltines, and some grapes.
I figured that the tuna would have a slightly briny flavor and I added mustard to the bread, crunched up the saltines to put on top along with the celery, and covered the whole thing with salad greens. Passable.
For dinner I had a chicken enchilada with beans and rice. The cheese and tomato sauce really helped out the enchilada and I squeezed some of my orange slices over the rice and beans. Nonetheless the saltless beans were pretty bad.
I am so glad to be home tonight and eat regular people food and maybe get a few hours of continuous sleep. The staff at the hospital was great but I am really hoping not to see them again any time soon!
It has been a while since I posted anything and that is because the miserable people on the plane coming back from Amsterdam had a wide variety of respiratory ailments that they did not bother to try to keep from spreading. So I caught a cold which developed into pneumonia and a stay in the hospital. I am home now but still not better. I guess it will take a while.
Weird thing is that I have totally lost my appetite. Nothing is appealing. We ordered in pizza last night mostly because I did not feel like cooking or eating anything. Since pizza is about my most favorite thing to eat I figured that it would tempt me. I ate two slices which is way less than I usually consume.
Maybe on Tuesday I will feel like eating again. We’ll see.
Apparently having the flu has made me lose my appetite for anything other than comfort food from my youth. Usually I want vegetable or seafood based dinners but this week I am all about lamb chops and ground beef.
Since I do not eat gluten we had tried a rolled oats preparation the last time we had meat loaf. It was a bit too crumbly so I zapped the oats in my mini- prep until they were bread crumb-like in consistency. I also minced the garlic and onion in the same way. I really do not want to be touching food so that was the end of my participation in dinner prep.
The meat loaf, cooked to 140F was quite good. I ate some broccoli and rice but mostly I just wanted meat loaf and ketchup. I am looking forward to a meat loaf sandwich tomorrow even if I have to eat it on horrible, gummy gluten free bread.
We have not had a ground beef chili in years! I pulled a recipe out of my binder which said this one was good from March, 2014! Since I am still under the weather, my contribution to the dinner was chopping up some onions and peppers. I was really not interested in preparing or eating dinner on Friday. John soldiered on without me .
The odd thing about this chili was that it did not taste like chili at all! It was more like a middle eastern stew of ground beef, tomatoes, beans, spices, and peppers. John had put some zip into it with chili powder and a little chipotle chili powder. Still, there was an undeniable sweetness to it like he had put in coriander and cinnamon. I don’t know, maybe that is just my feverish flu imagination taking over!
I cannot claim much credit for this dinner since I have been sick and not doing much prep or eating. I did peel the potatoes.
John did his usual masterful job of grilling the lamb chops and our daughter prepared the potatoes and broccoli. The potatoes which were made of one medium sweet potato and three small russets were enhanced with some butter, salt, and milk. The broccoli was simply steamed. The picture is of John’s plate.
When we first started making Chana dal (dried split chickpea stew) in our Instant Pot we followed the recipe from this website. https://pipingpotcurry.com/instant-pot-chana-dal/
As time went by we changed the recipe so it would be more in sync with our tastes. For instance we use a can of Rotel for some spicy tomato kick. We also lay down a bed of raw kale followed by steamed rice, and then the Chana dal. A sprinkling of cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice dress the top.
Last night I was not feeling up to all the components since I have a bad cold caught on the airplane coming home from vacation so I just plated rice, Chana dal, and cilantro. I had it again for lunch today. It seems so healthy, I hope it makes me better.
We bought a package of chicken breasts recently. They were on sale at a good price. The only problem is that they are gargantuan! Our half boneless breast weighed one pound (453 g)! Being so big they take quite a while to cook and tend to be sort of tough. John cooked the breast for 40 minutes at 350F (176C) and kept testing it along the way until it registered 158F (70C). The one breast was ample for the two of us and we even had leftovers.
We served the chicken with some packet gravy, rice, and asparagus. I cut the asparagus into pieces so that it would fit in the pan better. Asparagus is on sale around here for $0.99/lb. and it is so reminiscent of Spring.
Omnivore 