Monday, April 22, 2024

Three Beautiful Things 04-21-2024: Hungry for Spinach, Debbie's Spinach Salad, A Gemelli Family Dinner

1. Thanks to our breakfast at Roosters Country Kitchen in Pendleton on Friday morning, where I enjoyed a spinach and mushroom omelette, and, thanks to having bought a large container of spinach leaves at Costco on Saturday, I think I'm going to fix myself eggs and spinach on a regular basis for a while. I got right into it this morning with a Yukon gold potato and spinach scramble topped with a small amount of grated sharp cheddar cheese and it worked! 

I gave my breakfast an hour and half or so to digest and headed to the Fitness Center for a good session and listened to the recent '60s Satellite Survey broadcast, entitled "The 60s' 40 Biggest One Hit Wonders". 

It was a great show and I finished listening to it when I returned home. 

2. Carol assigned Debbie and me to make a green salad for tonight's family dinner. Debbie volunteered to take charge of our assignment. She enjoys remembering when her mother discovered spinach salad some time in the 1960s and Debbie replicated the salad and the dressing her mother made all those years ago. 

I don't have the recipe handy, but I loved the bacon in the salad and the dressing was a little sweet thanks to the inclusion of a small amount of sugar and some ketchup, both of which worked beautifully.

3. Carol went all out today and made a complex and delicious pasta sauce that included roasted tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, vodka, butter, red wine vinegar,  cinnamon sticks, and other great ingredients. 

She boiled gemelli pasta, combined it with the sauce, and put it all in the oven. 

It was an awesome dish and Debbie's spinach salad paired perfectly with it. 

Paul created a bar where we could make "mule" drinks of our choice blending ginger beer with either vodka, tequila, or amaretto. 

Well, earlier this week at the Plateau Steakhouse, I ordered a Cadillac Margarita and it triggered a desire in me to drink some straight tequila over ice. 

So, for my cocktail, I decided not to have a ginger drink (which I love), but enjoyed tequila on the rocks with a squeeze of lime juice. 

It was really good.

We had a really robust time at the dinner table talking about a very wide variety of subjects and having a lot of laughs. 

There's a lot going on in our family these days involving the banjo, dogs, medical stuff, future trips, stuff from the past, teaching, performing, and more and we seemed to talk about it all tonight, one way or another. 

It was fun. 

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