On the road again

I feel about like this fish right now. It is 3:20am, and I am sitting in the food court of John F. Kennedy International Airport's terminal 4, waiting for the airline ticket counter to open so that I can recheck my bag and continue my journey to Paraguay. Lucky for me there is free internet here! And I think that I should take this opportunity to begin to catch up on my blogging. I owe my family quite a few posts to document the very delicious and very impressive meals we cooked and shared over the christmas holiday. Unfortunately, the pictures are trapped in the currently out of order snapfish.com website that we use to share pictures (or as my mother has called it, 'that snap pig thing'). It seems that the times I find most convenient to use websites are also the times their administrators find most convenient to update them. I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting my return to blogland; I certainly hope I haven't lost any devoted readers in my delinquency. You'll have to stay tuned for pictures the christmas and new year's culinary celebrations. But, in the meantime, here is an update on the meals I've cooked the last few weeks since I returned from chicago.

1. The first notable dinner was whole paprika broiled branzino (which I think is corvina in spanish) with pumpkin risotto, above in closeup, below plated.

2. Salad of baby asian greens with peanut dressing and golden tempeh.

3 . To make up for all that healthy eating, and pay homage to my home town, we made a deep dish pizza. This was loaded with sausage, pepperoni, ham, onion, peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, and of course lots of cheese. Unfortunately, the crust recipe was a dud; It came out tough and flavorless. I should have suspected while I was making it, because the recipe was too close to a regular pizza dough, but a real chicago pie has a pastry crust.

4. Finally, we had red curry mussels with basmatti rice. This is one of my favorite ways to use shellfish, because it is really fast, attractive, and it tastes great. This dinner was no exception, except that the mussels were of highly dubious freshness. The tasted fine, but they smelled like a sea lion with indigestion before I rinsed them, lots of them were dead and I suspect the stomach ache I had later that night was no coincidence.