1. It was time today to dump the litter out of one of Luna and Copper's pans, clean out the pan, and replace the litter. This is one of those jobs that must sound miserable, but, for me, it's very gratifying to know I'm keeping this key element of Copper and Luna's life in our house as fresh and clean as possible.
Likewise, as I've written a million (or is it a zillion?) times before, I like to keep the garage as uncluttered as possible. To that end, I made a satisfying run to the transfer station to recycle cardboard after a quick trip up to the recycling station near the Shoshone Medical Center to leave off cans, plastic containers, and newspapers.
2. Last Thursday at the dentist, while my crowns cooked, I tapped on my Kindle app on my phone and suddenly remembered I have a cookbook loaded on it: Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking. I'd been assigned to prepare an appetizer for tonight's family dinner and I wondered if I might discover a recipe.
I sort of did.
I was looking at a recipe for Thai Baked Sweet Potatoes and when I saw it included a Ginger Tahini Sauce, an inspiration struck me.
First, I realized that for no good reason, since moving to Kellogg, I hadn't made peanut sauce. It's a condiment I loved experimenting with when we lived in Greenbelt, MD.
Next, I realized that I could use this recipe to make peanut sauce simply by substituting peanut butter for the tahini.
Last of all, I decided that I would make an appetizer similar to the shrimp bathed in lemon juice and olive oil I made a couple of weeks ago, but it would be shrimp dressed in peanut sauce.
So, today, I got to work.
I still had the leftover tahini a made a while back when I fixed a Greek dinner for family dinner.
I decided to use it up and I followed the recipe combining the tahini with lime juice, soy sauce, fresh ginger, minced garlic, chili sauce, and maple syrup.
Once finished, I decided I wanted more sauce, but as I doubled the recipe, I included a quarter cup of peanut butter instead of tahini.
I made a peanut/tahini sauce.
I chopped up several green onions and a most of a bunch of cilantro.
I boiled shrimp in two batches, covered the bottom of our 9" x 13" baking dish with shrimp, covered the shrimp with peanut/tahini sauce, and then topped the shrimp with chopped green onion and cilantro.
3. We met at Paul and Carol's for dinner tonight.
We started with the shrimp and tahini/peanut sauce I made and I also brought over about 1 1/2 baguettes from Beach Bum Bakery sliced.
Paul mixed us each a whiskey sour.
We finished our drink and appetizer and sat down at a table set up in the living room for a perfectly prepared meal.
Carol and Paul worked together to grill and slice London Broil, a mess of grilled vegetables, and a bowl of potato halves. It was a perfect combination of foods complimented deliciously by the fresh green salad Molly made.
We yakked about all kinds of stuff with a very special stretch of time devoted to hilarious stories about Mom. We lovingly and laughingly remembered Mom's obsession with coupons at any store, her meticulous reviewing of the sales receipt after any purchase, the time at Christy and Everett's wedding reception when she met Debbie for the first time and accidentally got a little tipsy from drinking wine, and other fun memories.
Christy prepared a delicious strawberry and rhubarb dessert. I'd say the dessert was in the dump cake family and it was sublime along with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
The food was top notch. The stories were plentiful, as was the laughter. We had some serious discussion, too, as is almost inevitable as we age and people we know begin to decline and we lose people we've known for years to death.
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