Three Beautiful Things 01-23-2024: Trip to Post Falls, Transplant Status and a Deep Nap, Steaming Barramundi

1. Christy and I piled into her Subaru and I blasted us to Post Falls where Christy's surgeon gave her all good news about her knee, about her recovery from knee replacement surgery. I won't go into detail. Just trust me. The news was good.

We then had a delayed birthday lunch at Capone's in Post Falls where I enjoyed a chicken breast, bacon, spinach, red onion, and boiled egg salad with poppy seed dressing called the Popeye along with a cup of creamy chicken soup. 

It was a delicious lunch followed by an easy drive back to Kellogg - the roads coming to Post Falls and returning home were wet and easy to drive on. 

2. For having easy drives, just sitting for a short while waiting for Christy, and eating a good lunch while drinking soda water, I was not expecting to be so tired when I returned home. 

I took a coma nap, to Copper's delight. 

I'm wondering if making the decision to return to active status on the transplant list might have tired me out. I've been pondering the timing of this decision for a couple of weeks or more and now seemed like the right time, especially with Christy recovering well.

3. Our HelloFresh box arrived today with two meals we've never had before. I'll write about the second meal tomorrow. 

I decided to fix the fish meal tonight. 

Until today, I'd never heard of barramundi, but there it was in the box, and I decided I'd follow the instructions and fix us Steamed Canonese-Style Barramundi with Rice, Roasted Green Beans, and Sweet Soy Sauce. 

Roasting the green beans was easy. So was cooking the jasmine rice. 

Mixing up and cooking the sweet soy sauce with sugar, water, ginger, scallions, and ponzu sauce was also a snap.

I had never, however, steamed any kind of fish before.

The cooking instruction that came with the box outlined a steaming process. I read it and decided not to do it HelloFresh's way, but my way.

I got out our superb steamer basket and accompanying pot, put over an inch of water in the pot, put the fish in the steamer basket, brought the water to a boil, put the basket in the pot, turned down the heat a bit, and steamed the fish as if it were broccoli. I checked the fish about three minutes before it was supposed to be done. My method worked more quickly and my first attempt at steaming fish was a success.

So was the meal.

For each of us, I laid a bed of rice half the bottom of a bowl, put a chunk of fish on each rice bed, filled the other half of the bowl with roasted green beans, and topped the fish with the sweet soy sauce.

It worked!