When we purchased our 42 ft 1979 Tayana Vancouver sailboat in 2009 we had hoped to take a sabbatical from our jobs in 2015 to do some cruising. We chose to name our boat Sonho, as it means “Dream” in Portuguese and adopted the motto, “Vivo O Sonho” … Living the Dream.
But Life Happened: lay-offs and, most importantly, my care for my beloved Nana kept us tied to the dock. There was no way I’d leave her; we just didn’t expect her to live as long as she fortunately did. After Nana passed in the fall of 2017 just shy of her 99th birthday, my sister and I made the decision to sell her home that we had inherited. Aaron and I would use our share of the proceeds to finish the work on the boat and invest the rest to take early retirement.
Mmmmmmm! If you love asparagus, this is a quick, easy and creamy soup that presents beautifully. Serve with a crusty loaf of bread to sop up all the goodness! It is very rich and makes a filling main course, or serve with a salad or lighter protein such as grilled or poached fish to round out the meal.
Winter means Comfort Food. I love cooking hearty stews and soups that take all day to simmer and develop complex flavors. This one is super-easy as it’s just a bit of chopping with the majority of the ingredients coming from cans.
A large part of learning to cook as an adult is the willingness (on my part) to try new things. As the recipient of my trial and error dishes, Hubby is a bit more skeptical. He’s a basic meat and potatoes kind of guy and also loves his carbs.
In past years, I’ve cooked a whole turkey for just hubby and I for Thanksgiving. The leftovers resulted in turkey sliders, turkey casserole and turkey soup. All good, but a bit boring three or four days in a row! So this year I decided to try turkey thighs, mainly because hubby and I prefer dark meat and it seemed like a great one-meal option.
Living in California, we have access to avocados year-round and it’s one of my favorite ingredients in meals and snacks. I found a recipe that called for cracking an egg into each hole, and it was a total failure … it didn’t note that the avocados needed to be extra large or the eggs needed to be extra small or the whole white would run out in a blob. So I tweaked it a bit by scrambling the eggs and making guacamole from the scooped out flesh. Delish and healthy!
Creamy polenta topped with a rustic tomato based veggie ragout is not only comfort food, but an easy option for feeding a picky crowd. I was cooking for a group of writers that included vegetarians and many with food allergies and aversions and this hearty lunch fit the bill.
