Those little chemo warriors must be staging a fierce battle inside my body because I'm still dragging. I just hope they don't get too carried away and kill off more good cells than bad cells. I decided yesterday that if I'm only going to have a limited supply of energy to draw upon, I'll have to allocate it on a priority basis, so I decided to concentrate primarily on cooking supper. I have managed to get out and fill the bird feeders, check on the seedlings in the greenhouse and do some spot watering out there, but have decided everything else, except for preparing one major meal a day, can wait until I have more energy and can get get around to doing it without becoming exhausted!
I turned to Jacques Pepin's More Fast Food My Way for menu ideas and recipes for yesterday and today. We have dined like kings for the past two days, I kid you not. In fact, by doling out my energy to one major task per day, I have gone from one course meals to two course until today I worked up to a three course meal! Go me!
Yesterday we began with smoked salmon timbales: alternating layers of goat cheese, thinly sliced smoked salmon, sliced apple and sliced red onion. A lovely combination of tastes and textures. We followed that with broiled lamb chops with spinach and baked potatoes with chive sour cream. The spinach was sauteed with garlic, pimentos and golden raisins. The menu also called for crepes with banana rum filling, but I had run out of steam by then so we went without a dessert. The lamb chops were delicious as was the spinach and I'll probably cook using that recipe again.
Tonight, we went for three courses- and made it! We began with a mushroom veloute. The recipe called for both white button mushrooms and tree ear mushrooms, but our local Piggly Wiggly is not known for offering less well-known varieties of mushrooms - I don't think I've ever seen a dried morel in there, let alone a tree ear. Despite the omission, the veloute was quite good, and I had made enough that we'll be able to have some for lunch tomorrow. For the main course we had what Jacques calls "Instant beef tenderloin stew." This is probably the first time I have ever cooked a stew without braising the meat and vegetables in some sort of broth. Diced potatoes, baby carrots, button mushrooms, chopped onions and garlic are cooked in butter and olive oil in a covered skillet until tender, at which point baby peas are added- I used frozen peas. The beef tenderloin is cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces and sauteed in another skillet, then removed when browned. A small amount of white wine and chicken broth are then added to the skillet, brought to a boil then everything is combined and served. It was very tasty and quite filling and I was surprised that the meat turned out to be as tender as it did. We finished up the meal with an apple. pecan and apricot crumble that was easy- peasy to put together and had been cooking in the oven while the rest of the meal was being prepared.
So that is how I've allocated my limited amount of energy. I'm hoping that the fatigue will lessen in a day or so and I can actually get more accomplished. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I'm off to bed.
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