Rattling pots and pans

I'm not a great cook; I can admit it and be comfortable with that assessment. When I was much younger, I was passionate about food in the way that you can be when you first discover you're good at something and you're encouraged.  It's too bad that at fifteen, I hadn't been exposed to a more eclectic variety of foods and had a family that didn't insist on beef and potatoes for almost every meal.

My passion really involved the pastry and dessert portion of the menu.  I made good pies, I made tasty treats, but I didn't have a 'feel' for cooking .. I didn't really experiment  beyond the recipes in the treasured volumes of Three Hills ladies tea and coffee circles.  I'm sure they were IODE efforts or some such group, but I don't recall more about them, other than my grandmother's name was attached to more than one recipe. And those were the ones I used. Now SHE was a great cook.   I also don't really remember cookbooks in our home, other than those or the yearly ones from the Blue Flame Kitchen which were supplied for free by the rural gas company. I think Mom also had a tattered old Mennonite or Hutterite cookbook that she treasured and I wasn't allowed to touch for fear of it falling totally apart.

I have tons of cookbooks today .. and sometimes I wonder why.  I peruse them looking for recipes that are somewhat reminiscent of what I want to do, or have ingredients I want to use, but I rarely follow a recipe.  I make substitutions all the time.  I use recipes as 'somewhat of a general guideline.' This has led to spectacular failures and inspired genius.

I know I've mentioned my friend Cécile who is a very interesting cook as well as an interesting person.  She has three things that make her an interesting cook, in my opinion.  Hailing from Holland and being vegetarian by preference but not insistence; she's turned me onto preparations and vegetables that I would not have otherwise come across my table.  Also, she owns (and uses) a Gordon Ramsay cookbook.

Lately, we've been using quinoa in our meals as a substitution for starches of other sorts.  One of the reasons is because I'm trying to watch how much wheat I consume, a second is because quinoa works fantastically in salads and a third is this, a gift from Cécile ...

There's one I want to try with lavender and cherry quinoa.  I'll let you know how it goes once we have cherries on sale again.

In the meantime, here's a recipe I made last night ... I pretty much just made it up as I went along.

Warm Pork Quinoa Salad (serves 3)

• 3/4 C quinoa cooked in 1½ cups of water and set aside to cool.
• 3 center cut pork chops, sliced thin and sauteed
• Handful (generous) of pecans, toasted in a fry pan with a tsp of plantation sugar
• 3 cups fresh Romaine lettuce (could use spinach) chopped
• Alfalfa sprouts to taste.  They're good for you. Shush.
• 2 Spring onions, bias-sliced
• 3 small peaches, peeled and a sliced

Dressing

• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp merlot vinegar
• 1 tsp plantation sugar (or to taste)
• ½ tsp fresh lime juice

Whisk dressing and drizzle over the rest of the ingredients; toss and serve.  

And here's a wee picture of  Green Potatoes ...

Scoop the innards out of a cooled baked potato. While you're making the filling, put the skins under the broiler, brushed on the inside with a bit of butter. Take out when they're brown. Salt and pepper to taste.

I mashed the potato with a bit of butter and cream, but then added half an avocado  ¼ cup cream cheese, bacon bits and 2 spring onions.  Before putting them back into the oven, I heated the potatoes for 2 minutes in the microwave, then sprinkled cheddar cheese over the top before putting them back into a 400° F oven to finish re-heating.

Poor Bruce, I've bastardized his mashed potatoes more often than he'd like, I'm sure .. but then again, sometimes we get results this good. He approved heartily.  Green potatoes .. who'd have thought??