Happy Independence Day

Today is the Fourth of July, so of course we had a barbecue. Our new outdoor kitchen is finished. We decided to use today as an excuse to get some people over and try out our new grills. I thought we'd try an ambitious menu, drawn from a new cook book: "Planet Barbecue" by Steven Raichlen.

The menu included:
- Santa Maria Tri-Tip (beef)= Californian recipe
- Ginger, Garlic and Honey Grilled Back Ribs (pork) = Cambodian recipe
- Grilled Tofu with Chile Peanut Sauce = Malaysian recipe
- Grilled Bananas = Colombian recipe
- Caramelized Grilled Pineapple = Brazilian recipe
- Rotisserie Onions = Brazilian recipe

And there were various other things, including a summer pudding made by Deep Thought. We were inspired by OEM saying she had made one a couple of days ago. We'd never made one before and were pretty pleased by how it turned out. Like OEM's, ours went onto the plate without falling apart! One of our young friends had also made dessert: decorated cupcakes laid out in the pattern of the US flag (see photo). There were many left over at the end of the meal, and I cruelly made her mother take them all home. Good for me!

The grilling was reasonably successful. The best dish of those listed above was the ribs. Hubby burned them a bit, but it didn't seem to matter too much. The beef was a bit tough, though not sure why. The tofu was fine, but was an incredible faff to make, with an ingredient list as long as your arm that would have been longer if I'd bothered to buy every item called for. I think Hubby learned that both grills get hotter than he expected - and certainly hotter than our old kettle grill, which was consigned to the recycling center yesterday - and so everything is even more inclined to burn than before.

We'll be grilling for 26 people next weekend, and I'm sure there will be even more men around willing to offer their expert advice. It really is a guy thing.

I guess this isn't the path to weight loss

Um, a chocolate croissant, piece of gingerbread (home made by a friend) and a slice of hazlenut mousse probably doesn't qualify as the path to weight loss - but it is still a diet!

Domestic Goddess Redux

Well, not to be outdone by OEM, I've cooked from scratch twice myself this week.

On Tuesday our dinner was Chilean sea bass with red pepper sauce (two red peppers roasted in the oven, skinned and pureed, then add sweetcorn, two chopped spring onions, a bit of chicken stock, and seasoning; pour over sauteed fish) on pasta; and on Wednesday, dinner was Alaskan salmon with mango and ginger sauce (flesh of two mangoes, chopped and pureed with a bit of fresh grated ginger, splash of soy sauce, spot of water to thin), served with basmati rice and decorated with mango slices.

An unusual amount of cooking with multiple ingredients in one week!

Why is it so important to know which country the fish comes from? And does fish even come from a country?

Domestic Goddess

I've decided not to keep blogging about how badly I'm doing. Instead, let me tell you about dinner last night, which was a triumph of home produce (and surprisingly for this house included both a main course and a dessert - I felt almost like a proper 1950s housewife!).

I've been growing courgettes in a large tub by the back door; we went to Devon at the weekend to see Mum who has been ill and acquire their enormous 4x4 (that's another story), and came home to find one courgette had turned into a marrow. So I stuffed it with some mince that I had made previously and put in the freezer and poured over a pot of Waitrose Four Cheese Sauce, and baked it in the oven. It was delicious.

Then I brought out the summer pudding, made with the excess of strawberries and raspberries that this unusually sunny summer has brought on in the garden. I've never made one before, and it was surprisingly triumphant. Also easy - line pudding basin with slices of bread, bring fruit up to boil with some sugar, pour into bread lining, cut another piece of bread to make a lid, stick a saucer on the top and leave it in the fridge overnight. It even turned out without collapsing into a purple mess.

I can recommend these things. Oh, and I swam 30 lengths of the pool this morning - a personal best!

Happy summer.

Dr Mom Weigh In

Much to the surprise of the gathered masses, I have lost a pound this week. I weighed in this morning at 153.4 lbs.

Groaning Waistbands

Oh my goodness, the fondue meal. Talk about excess.

We started with the ridiculously large and unnecessary salad that comes as part of the meal. Hubby warned our guests not to try to eat it, most of it, or even any of it, but they didn't listen. Then came the cheese part. Yummy. Bacon/Cheddar/Buttermilk and beer mixture, with bread and veggies. Delicious.

Then came the meat part. Two Fondue Feast Combinations, comprising scallops, prawns, tuna, boar, duck, beef, other fish, ostrich, and other things I've no doubt forgotten about, all grilled (or as Brother John pedantically pointed out, fried) on the hotplate in front of us.


And then the piece de resistance, the chocolate fondue dessert. After much discussion, I took charge and ordered the Triple X, which is milk chocolate and fudge; eaten with fruit and bad for you bits like profiteroles.

We also downed a bottle of wine.

This morning I rose from my bed with a strong sensation that my body had not succeeded in digesting anything at all during the night. I think we were all suffering a bit. Little Starlet said it served us right for not taking her with us. However, I should point out that she and her babysitter made a chocolate fondue in our own kitchen, which they ate with strawberries and apple slices, so she isn't having too deprived an existence.

Exercise Resurgence

I can't say that I've been terribly virtuous on the food front - the three croissant for breakfast on Sunday, the Vietnamese dinner also on Sunday, and the fondue meal that is on the agenda for this evening, rather negate any feeble attempts to lessen the calorific intake by eating lettuce.

But I have been relatively, and surprisingly, virtuous on the exercise front. We have visitors at the moment - Hubby's aunt and brother - so you'd think that we'd not be exercising at all, but far from it. On Friday, we went for a walk at Sanborne Park in Saratoga (much complaining from the children), which was definitely uphill. Yesterday we were in Muir Woods, north of San Francisco. Unusually for us, we didn't stick with the flat, ashphalted path around the forest floor, but struck out up the Ocean View Trail, across the Lost Trail, and down the Fern Trail, a walk of about three miles and two hours. Then this morning we spent an hour walking at Arasteradero Preserve in Palo Alto.

The guests are looking a bit shell shocked, but we are all congratulating ourselves on how healthy we are.