Dinner

I have an enormous fondness for delicious food. It's very comforting. ~Teri Garr

Today, after an extremely fun-filled day spent with the Boyfriend and the Kid, I came home and threw down in the kitchen. Like I kicked ass in my kitchen. I threw together a meal so perfectly delicious in less than 45 minutes that would give Wolfgang Puck a run for his friggin' title. I don't know whether it was the fact that my spirit was finally aligned with my life or that the ingredients were all just there, but whatever it was, something utterly miraculous happened in my kitchen tonight.

It all started with a pot of rice. I decided to make Jollof Rice, which is like Jambalaya rice but definitely more savory and spicy. It's one of my favorite dishes to cook, but it's so easy to screw up because of the fine balance between all the spices used, the heat of the stove, and the probability of burning the bottom before the rice is completely cooked. Somehow though, all these foibles were avoided and it came together in a stunning delicious shock of flavor!

Moving right along was the tofu. For those of you that know tofu, you know that ish is kinda dicey to cook with, because it's such an amorphous substance. I wanted to do suya tofu (what? vegetarians need suya too!!)---uhuh, and thought that I would first fry the tofu on the stove top. That wasn't working because it kept soaking up the oil instead of frying out crispy, so I threw it into the oven, set it to broil and melted some jalepeno pepper jack cheese on top.

The final dish was an eggplant sautéed with different veggies that ended up turning into a stir fry with a distinct yet spicy peanut butter sauce. They all came together quite well and with a dollop of sour cream on top of the eggplant it was a magnificent culinary delight that really did titillate and tantalize not only our taste buds but also our bellies. I'm so glad there are leftovers!

The Boyfriend said that if he didn't already love me to pieces he would be head over heels in love with me after that meal....*sigh*! Mommy always did say a way to a man's heart was through his stomach---she wasn't playing when she threw us in the kitchen at 11 years old.

So I guess this is a shout out to my mom's....good lookin' out Mommy dearest!