I made chilled asparagus soup. The asparagus is still coming on ferociously and I had a pound to do something with. Chilled soup is pretty light, so I made some parmesan croutons to go with it. And the soup is pretty mellow, so I made some fiery grilled shrimp to round it out. Spring and summer, cool and hot. It was perfect.

Grilling Shrimp

The shrimp were marinated with cloves of smashed garlic. I looked at those cloves and thought they’d be good grilled too. So I stuck them on the end of the skewers. But they weren’t all that tasty. Since they were smaller than the shrimp they didn’t contact the grill. Maybe over a charcoal grill?

The Whole Package

The entire meal (somebody should’ve wiped the rim of the soup bowl before snapping a picture!). It was a wonderful combination. The soup was light and smooth and tasted like fresh asparagus. The shrimp was fiery and unctuous. The parmesan croutons were salty and crunchy.

It was all delightful, and while it took a bit of work in advance, to put it together at meal time took almost no effort.

The recipes.

Brushed Owen

That’s a lot of hair from a little dog.

He likes it if you sing to him while you’re brushing, and this is his favorite song:

Brush Your Corgi

(to the tune of ‘Shake Your Booty’ by KC and the Sunshine Band)

Aah, everybody, get on the floor, let’s brush!
Don’t fight the feelin’, give yourself a rush!

Brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi!
Oh, brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi.

Aah, You can, you can do it very well.
You’re the best in the world, I can tell.

Oh, Brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi!
Oh, brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi.
(WoWohoo,Yeah!)
Brush brush, brush brush!

Aah, Brush brush, brush brush!
Aah, Brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi!
Oh, brush brush brush, brush brush brush,
Brush your Corgi! Brush your Corgi.

Aah, Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
Aah, don’t fight the feeling.
Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
Aah, give yourself a chance.
Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
You can do it! do it!
Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
(Come home with momma now!)
Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
WoooHOOOOHoooo!
Brush brush, brush brush, brush your Corgi!
Aah, BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
Brush brush(come on), brush brush(come on), on your Corgi!
Aah! do your duty. Aah haa!
[Fade out:] Brush brush(come on), brush brush(come on), on your Corgi!

We’d never been there before nor even seen a review of it. It was a great find! Delicious food, pleasant decor, and a staff consisting of the chef and one server who kept it all together and were friendly even when the lunch service got busy.

Their menu can be found here.

I had chicken shawarma and fries, and Debbie had chicken kabob and hummus. We had kebbie for an appetizer. Now, I know next to nothing about this kind of cooking, so I can’t attest to its authenticity. But I can say it was delicious. I’m no fan of hummus, the grocery store stuff is gritty and tastes like sawdust to me. The hummus I stole from Debbie’s plate nothing like that, it was creamy and flavorful.

I wasn’t willing to trade my fries for them though. While getting fries at a Mediterranean may seem like an ugly American thing to do, these were perfectly fried, crispy on the outside and tender in the middle. Best of all, they were dusted with some spices, something like paprika, cumin, garlic, that melded with cuisine and made me feel less like an ugly American.

The chicken shawarma and the chicken kabob were both fresh-tasting and wrapped in wonderfully tasty pita bread.

Ali Baba’s isn’t fancy, but it sure is tasty. Debbie grabbed a takeout menu on the way out, it’ll make a great supper that she can pick up for us after a busy day at Arbor Farms.

Howard

is invited on a mission to the International Space Station. Howard’s girlfriend tries to talk him out of it; she’s worried about his safety and so on.

ISS

I turned to Debbie and said, “If I get a chance to go to space, you won’t try to talk me out of it, will you?” She looked at me and said, “You take Dramamine® when you get on an airliner. You think you’re going into space?”

Brutal, but true. I can’t read in a car, the weightless sensation in an airplane makes me beg for a crash to end it, and I wouldn’t ride a roller coaster for all the money in the world.

Another dream crushed. I’m never going to be an astronaut.

Mighty Morels

Life is very very good when you can anticipate morels for supper.

One of those things has been to try baking bread in my Jay Rosswurm Signature Big Stone Cooking Area. A Saturday with nothing much going on was a great day to try it.

About 3 hours before I wanted to start baking I built a fire in the bread oven.

Getting Hot

By baking time it seemed hot all right, you could feel the heat radiating from several feet away. I popped our oven thermometer into it to see just hot it was. The thermometer goes up to 600 degrees and the needle was pegged at the far end of the scale.

That probably should’ve been a clue to me that it was too hot, but I assumed that more heat was better when it came to baking bread, so I popped the bread in the oven.

I was using the Cooks Illustrated ‘Almost No-Knead’ recipe that has you bake the bread in a cast iron dutch oven covered for 30 minutes and then uncovered for 20 minutes.

A little uneasy about the blistering heat, I checked the bread after 20 minutes.

Oops

Oops. It was the moment of realization that I should’ve cooled things off a bit. But after trimming off the burnt crust, it was just splendid.

Wonder Bread

It tasted delicious!

An hour after baking the oven was still at 500 degrees. I’ve read about people baking stews in the bread oven after they’ve baked their bread. That’s what I’ll try next.

Freshly Picked Asparagus

Not only is it the first thing we’ve picked this year, but it’s the first crop from the asparagus patch I started last year. It’s exciting to see it survived the winter and is thriving.

Owen still has his winter fur and has been seeking shade wherever he can find it.

Shady Owen

One of those was carnitas, pork cooked in lard, then served in a warm corn tortilla. A nice fatty pork shoulder roast boiled in lard. It’s hard to imagine food getting any better than that!

Melting Lard

That’s 3 pounds of lard melting in my big chicken frying skillet. When I added the pork it was within half of inch of the top of the skillet. It wasn’t hard to imagine that a gas cooktop and boiling lard to the top of the pan was a recipe for disaster. I switched it all to a stockpot.

Boiling Pork

Once the pork has simmered in the lard for a couple of hours it’s fork-tender. Then you crank the heat and boil it hard to brown it up as shown in the picture above. The end result is this:

Cooked Pork

Crispy ‘bark’ on the outside, tender juicy pork on the inside. You then shred it like pulled pork and wrap in a warm corn tortilla with whatever you like.

Anything this delicious has to be good for you!