1. Last Sunday, Christy's plan (hope?) was to serve shepherd's pie at family dinner. Its featured meat is lamb. When she found ground lamb at one of the stores, she concluded it was too expensive and so she bought ground beef and we had cottage pie.
Debbie bought a pound of ground lamb several months ago and I have repeatedly seen it in our freezer. Had I known Christy could have used it last week, I would have donated it to the family dinner fund (ha ha -- there isn't such a thing).
Instead, I decided as tonight's host that I would make something with the lamb and decided Mediterranean stuffed bell peppers would be good.
I thawed out the frozen lamb.
I chopped a white onion and minced four garlic cloves and cooked them for about five minutes.
I added the lamb and cooked the aromatics and the lamb together until the lamb browned.
I finished cooking a pot of basmati rice and soon I added ground cloves, cinnamon, and cumin along with two chopped tomatoes and tomato paste and golden raisins and toasted almond slivers to the lamb, onion, and garlic mixture.
After the lamb cooked for about five more minutes, enhanced by the above ingredients, I added the rice to the stuffing.
I cut the tops off the peppers and pulled out the seed and other stuff inside and then stuffed the peppers with the meat, aromatics, tomatoes, and other ingredients.
I placed the stuffed peppers in the bottom of the Dutch oven, poured water in the bottom, and put it in the oven, lid on, for about 45 minutes at 375 degrees.
2. Christy brought a delicious Carpaccio for an appetizer and Carol made a Greek salad to go with the stuffed peppers. Our focus was Mediterranean and we succeeded through our shared effort to produce a very good meal.
After tweeking our family schedule for the next couple of months a bit, we enjoyed talking about books and learned news about some people around the Silver Valley. I couldn't stop myself from saying a few things about last night's concert. Paul talked about plans for the fall production at the theater (I don't know if the fall play is public knowledge so, for now, I'll hold it in confidence).
I hadn't made stuffed peppers before and was happy my idea to make them in a Mediterranean style worked out. I wanted classical music to play during our time together, but I didn't want to have on surging symphonies or blazing concert.
Instead, I put on a playlist of Mozart's piano sonatas, and this music provided a tranquil and virtuosic backdrop for our time together this evening.
3. At 10:00 this morning, Leonard Oakland hosted his two hour classical music program. At some point, he announced that the Gonzaga Symphony will be playing at the university on Thursday evening. The program will feature violinist Gil Shaham, unknown to me until Leonard's announcement about the concert, and now I know he his highly regarded and is a Grammy award winner.
I'll be there Thursday as long as nothing comes up to prevent me from going.
I'm especially stoked that Gil Shaham will be featured as the soloist for Brahm's Violin Concerto in D Major. The rest of the program looks great: Mozart, Mussorgsky, and Saint-Saens.
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