* I don't have any updates to share about Goose.
1. Today, it was my turn to host family dinner. I wanted to make something flexible because, as the day started, I wasn't sure when Carol and Paul would return home from Meridian.
So, Saturday, I decided I'd thaw pork chops so that I could cook them in the crock-pot. I like pork chops with mushroom soup, but I didn't want to use sodium heavy canned condensed mushroom soup, so I wondered how it might work to make a soup from scratch and use it.
My first idea was to use coconut milk. It's thick and, I think, it's good for Carol and Paul, who do their best to follow a Keto diet plan.
My second idea was to give the soup a layer of ginger flavor.
So, I chopped up a plug of ginger, cooked it until fragrant, and added two chopped onions and several chopped stalks of celery. While I cooked these ingredients in olive oil, I sliced and chopped about a pound a half of crimini mushrooms. When the celery, onion, and ginger were tender, I removed them from the Dutch oven and cooked the mushrooms in two batches.
I returned the celery, onion, and ginger to the Dutch oven and added two cans of coconut milk. I thought it seemed a little too thick, so I thinned it out slightly with vegetable broth.
I let this soup cook for a while and took out the six thawed pork chops and seasoned them with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
In the crock pot, I combined the coconut milk mushroom soup and the pork chops and put the crock-pot on low.
2. I like to have rice salad on hand, so I cooked two cups of jasmine rice with three cups of water, let it cool, and mixed the rice with sliced/chopped cucumber, roasted almonds, chopped tomatoes, chopped fresh cilantro, basil, and mint, green olives stuffed with garlic, feta cheese, olive oil, rice vinegar, and olive brine.
I wasn't sure if everyone could eat rice on their diet plans, so I also prepared sliced tomatoes topped with olive oil, rice vinegar, fresh basil, and Parmesan cheese.
Lastly, Mike Stafford had brought some fresh asparagus from central Washington to Kellogg and this morning Ed brought me a bag of spears.
I heated up butter in a cast iron pan and fried the spears. Once tender, I topped them with Parmesan cheese. I had also prepared some ground almonds for the asparagus, but, alas, I put them in a bowl and knocked it off the counter while dancing around the kitchen to Santana's "Soul Sacrifice."
When Christy, Everett, Carol, and Paul arrived, I handed each of them a gin and tonic made from Uncle Val's Botanical Gin. Paul and Carol told us about the plans for Burt Roberts' memorial on Saturday, May 11th. From there, our conversations went a variety of directions and everyone enjoyed my pork chop experiment and the sides.
3. I've owned a wireless smart speaker for over a year. When Patrick comes to Kellogg, he always connects music on his cell phone to this speaker, but I hadn't tried to do it with my phone.
Today, I did.
So, through the magic of Bluetooth, I listened to podcast episodes from Serious Eats, Gravy, This American Life, TED Radio, and Broken Record I had loaded on my phone and then listened to a slew of some of my favorite YouTube videos, all through the smart speaker.
Finding podcasts through the Alexa app is possible, but it's a clumsy process. Using my cell phone with the smart phone means I can use my Podbean app and it's much more efficient, making finding episodes and playing them much easier.
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