Back in the Kitchen Again

Today was Mother's Day so I decided I'd try to make something special for dinner.  And I wanted it to be a surprise, at that.  So I picked a menu and got the stuff.  I'm not sure what I was thinking because the menu I settled on was a bunch of stuff I have never fixed before.  Experiment on the big Mother's Day meal?  Experiment on the mother of my children?  Yeah, I was taking a big chance and feeling the pressure.  But what the heck.  Charge and move forward, right?

So I did the shopping and got all the stuff.  Then I decided to see what I could do ahead of time because we always come home from church hungry and I didn't want to make everyone wait a long time.  But, having never fixed this stuff before, I wasn't entirely sure how long it would take. Sure, lots of recipes gave preparation times and cooking times.  But how reliable is that?  I dunno, I usually don't pay attention to that stuff.  So I went through everything and picked out what I could do ahead of time.  Then on Saturday I fixed a couple of things early.

The main course was going to be marinated salmon.  I figured I could make the marinade ahead of time.  That part went pretty smooth.

One of the side dishes was a pasta dish, a mix of pasta and zucchini, with roasted tomatoes.  The recipe called for julienne cut zucchini. Julienne cut, umm.  For that I would need a julienne cutter.  For that I would need to know what a julienne cutter is.  Google is a wonderful thing; only took a minute to find out it is a tool we don't have in our kitchen.  But, happy day, my little spiralizer can do the same thing, or at least close enough.  So that's what I did.

So I ran the two zucchini through it and ended up with some wonderfully cut zucs.  And probably a heck of a lot easier than a julienne cutter would have done anyway.

Asparagus was also on the menu so I cut the woody ends off and set the rest to soak in water overnight, to soften it up.  My recipe said that was a good idea.  So once all that was done it all went into the fridge and I was done for the day.

I had intended to put the fish in the marinade before we left for church but I forgot.  Oh, well.  Soon as we got home that was the first thing I did.

With the fish marinading I started on the pasta.  First things was to roast the tomatoes.  I've never done that before but it was easy enough.  So I got that going and then put the asparagus on, as well as some hollandaise sauce, which is mostly milk.

That's where things started getting intense.  All this stuff cooking at the same time, a couple of the things needing constant stirring.  Alas, photos fell by the way side.  The last thing I wanted was to burn the Mother's Day dinner.  And I must confess, Mullbeere was here and helped with the desert.

But in about an hour it all came together and was on the table, ready to eat.  And it looked pretty good, too.

And when it was all done and everybody had eaten their fill, Brombeere said it was pretty good.  She said it is not the menu she would have come up with if she had been asked but she was pretty happy with it anyway.  That, and the fact that everybody had seconds of something or another, made me pretty happy.  I was happy with how it all turned out.  Happy Mother's Day!