Three Beautiful Things 02-02-2021: No Recipe Cooking, Mole Sauce Ahead, Concert Interrupted

 1.  I decided to just start tossing food items into a pot and see what happens.

I heated up some olive oil and added a small chunk of ground beef, about half of an onion chopped, and some chopped celery. Once the meat browned and the onion and celery were soft, I added a can of black beans and a can of diced tomatoes, half a small bag of frozen corn, and the remainder of a bag of long grain white rice, about 4 oz I'd say. I had some leftover chicken stock in the fridge and I added it to the pot and brought it all to a boil, put the lid on, and let it simmer. When the rice was tender, I tasted it and decided chili powder would help it out. It did. The result was a versatile pot of thick food. If I want to add liquid to it, it will be a nice soup. Without water, it will be kind of a stew, or, as I did later, I can use it rolled in a corn tortilla. Whether I eat it out of a bowl or rolled inside of a tortilla, shredded cheese tastes very good on top of this food I made. 

2. I got to thinking that this it would be fun to fill tortillas with this Tex-Mex-y mixture, put them in a pan, cover them with mole sauce, and heat them in the oven. I knew, however, that I don't have the ingredients on hand for mole sauce. No problem. I went on line and ordered some Mexican chocolate, dried chipotle and ancho chiles peppers, and a jar of almond butter. I'll follow a Cooks Illustrated recipe, make some mole sauce, and try it out in combination with the concoction I created today.

3. I like to enjoy a cocktail while tuning into Bill Davie's Tree House Concerts on Tuesday nights and decided to try a slightly altered Suburan this evening. It's a rye, port wine, dark rum drink with bitters. I don't have port on hand (yet), but, the Basil Hayden Dark Rye I bought Sunday is infused with some port wine. I thought, what the heck, I'll mix this drink without the port (with plans to buy some port at a later date) and it was tasty.

Bill had a powerhouse concert underway -- I especially enjoyed hearing "Layers of Love" and "Ravine". When his concert reached the poetry break, however, the phone rang. It was Debbie. Bill posts his concerts on YouTube, so, once he'd done that, I'll listen to what I missed tonight. 

Debbie and I had a good and rambling conversation. We didn't have anything pressing to discuss, so we just yakked about this and that and established, once again, that we have no idea when Debbie will return to Kellogg. No problem.  The pandemic affects everything.