You Say It's Your Birthday?

Today I am 49 years old. Well, technically not until sometime around 9 p.m., or 8 p.m. if you are in Chicago, which is where I was actually born. I fortuitously have the day off work, but no really big plans for the day beyond spending time with myself relaxing. Of course, there will be cooking involved, but I find that relaxing. I have a job that demands a great deal of interaction with my fellow human beings, but I truly am a solitary creature left to my own devices and relish quality private time to recharge my energy. It's nice to have time to reflect and be grateful for all of the blessings in my life. Wouldn't change a thing, not even the unhappy times, because it's all made me who I am today, and I like who I am most days!

Growing up, my mom made a big deal out of birthdays. They were usually family affairs, with both sets of grandparents invited for dinner and cake. When I was young, you got to pick your favorite restaurant to go to, but as I got older, sometime in my teens, we began to cook at home and you got to pick what was for dinner. When my brother and I were small, there was usually some kind of cake and ice cream, but as we got older my generally non-cake loving family members began to pick another kind of dessert. Being a summer baby, I remember usually choosing something on the grill for dinner. A nice sirloin steak, or perhaps my mom's lemon-oregano chicken. Maybe the barbequed chicken done with a recipe from one of mom's co-workers. There would be baked potatoes, locally grown sweet corn and maybe some cucumbers in sour cream or tomatoes in sweetened vinegar. Sometimes, we'd make Mrs. Cardinalli's zucchini provencal. My favorite dessert of choice was lemon meringue pie.

This year, I contemplated using my Cheesecake Factory gift card, but after thinking a bit more, I decided I could make my own celebratory dinner, and since I'm entertaining myself, it could be anything I wanted. I headed to the grocery store with a vague idea of large shrimp and salad. I picked up some nice baby greens, a red onion, an English cucumber and some grape tomatoes that I'll sprinkle with a little gorgonzola cheese and a garlicky homemade vinagrette, and then headed off to the seafood counter. The shrimp that were thawed in the case weren't the size I had in mind at all, and I wasn't inclined to thaw shrimp this afternoon or pay for a whole pound of large frozen shrimp. I did spy some lovely, large sea scallops in the case, though, and decided that three of them, done up with the rub from my favorite Cumin-Crusted Chilean Sea Bass would be just the ticket. Toasted whole cumin seeds are mixed with a dash of cayenne pepper and sea salt and given a quick whir in a coffee or spice grinder, and rubbed over the scallops or any firm-fleshed white fish (cod works beautifully!). The fish is seared quickly on both sides in a little olive oil in an oven-proof skillet and finished in a jiffy in a 400 degree oven. Heavenly for such little time and trouble!

A quick tour to the meat counter and I found a very nice, very small piece of sirloin steak. Aha! My version of surf and turf. The steak will be seasoned and seared on both sides, and then finished in the oven along with the scallops. I thought about cake. Or pie. Or something for dessert. There was nothing really portion-sized to suit my tastes or budget, though, and then I remembered the wonderful brunch drink I'd had with my friend Lisa last Sunday. She put some passion fruit sorbet into glasses and we poured chilled prosecco over it. There was no passion fruit sorbet at my store, but there was some mango sorbet and a small bottle of asti to be had. It's not prosecco, but it will work just fine.

Now that's my idea of a birthday celebration! If you are of a more social nature, it's certainly easy enough to pull this one off for two to four people.

Lovely Leftovers

Okay, I'm going to admit that one of the ways I get my cooking fix and exist quite happily on a budget is because I like leftovers. I never realized until I was chatting with a friend recently that not everyone likes leftovers. You'd think I'd have wrapped my head around this one a very long time ago, given that my dad is one of those people who doesn't like leftover stuff. One of my mom's sure-fire tricks to go out to dinner was to threaten to heat up all the leftover stuff in the fridge. Or make tuna noodle casserole. But I digress. I clean out Dad's refrigerator all the time, tossing out things I made two weeks earlier or that got dragged home in a carryout box in what must have been a fit of optimism on Dad's part.

Leftovers are part and parcel of my lunches and a good part of dinners almost every week. I think it is only in late summer, when corn and tomatoes are at their best and make a dinner all their own, that I approach actual cooking on a daily basis, and then it is just a matter of heating water to boil some corn and cooking a piece of chicken or fish or broiling up a burger or a chop. Usually I do serious cooking (I do not count making a salad or a vegetable as cooking most of the time) about once or twice a week. I make a couple of main dishes, have it fresh off the stove or out of the oven or crockpot once, and then I reheat.

This week, I wanted to use my Boca bolognese to make baked rigatoni. I mixed the sauce with cooked rigatoni and two kinds of cheese (shredded Parmesan and mozzarella), and then topped it with little spoonfuls of part-skim ricotta and more Parmesan and mozzarella. Threw it in an 8 x 8 pan and baked it till the cheese began to brown and everything was bubbly. Of course, I'd made something else for dinner and it is still waiting in my refrigerator to be portioned out.

My other dish this week is downright sinful. Not something I'll make every week, to be sure. It's salmon noodles romanoff. I mixed cooked, butttered medium egg noodles with sour cream, green onion sour cream chip dip, chives, Parmesan cheese, a beaten egg and a can of drained pink salmon. Topped it with a mixture of plain bread crumbs and Parmesan that I'd tossed with some melted margarine. Baked it until the crumbs were golden brown. I portioned it right out of the oven into plastic containers. Took some to work along with some fresh cherries and that was my dinner.

One of the things that makes leftovers easy for me is a supply of plastic containers. A casserole dish may get neglected, but individual portions make it easy to either reheat at home or to grab and go when I'm heading out the door. They also take up much less room in my refrigerator, which is a good thing. Makes more room for all those jars of mustard and salad dressing and pickles that I am so fond of.