Tarragon Cream sauce Pasta

I'm telling Esme about another one of the family recipes that I want to make and show her how to make - and every other recipe I've been finding for it uses white wine in it for reduction in the sauce. And I had to think, ah.. yes, my mother never cooked with that (cooking alcohol) at all, so of course the 'family recipe' that I know doesn't have it, so.. do I try to do it 'correctly' according to the books or do I cook what I know so I don't 'mess it up'? I'm choosing option two, and then maybe we can learn how to make the 'actual French recipe version' later.  Apparently there is a 'boil the onions in white wine' step that I've never done in my life.. and am not sure I want to.  

 This is usually served with chicken breast, but can also be served with eggs.  We didn't have fresh garden tarragon, but I was inspired to make this by the dried tarragon packet I got in our spice sampler.  Tarragon goes bad quickly, much quicker than many spices - and the reason I haven't made it in many years is that it is hard to find it, and then when you do, a little disappointing to throw much of it away later.  I used finely diced zucchini instead of the real chopped tarragon plants that were in a recipe I found - I think maybe it was made with canned green beans at times in our household, my mom canned a lot of green beans every summer.

 We decided to make it with eggs.  It is not an easy dish to make with three burners by yourself - will need to practice again, as one of the burners was an omelette to go with it and that got a bit messy in between - started pasta, then melted butter in a big pan and added finely diced zucchini and sliced sweet onions, cooking them until the onions were translucent, then added a bit more water to make sure there was enough liquid - added a few tablespoons of flour until it began to form a paste with the butter, added some grated cheese (used the last of the gruyere block we had, about 3 by 2 inches) to that to finish making it a full paste (roux), then began to reliquify with half-and-half, then whole milk, until the sauce and melted cheese came to the right consistency, added dried tarragon and lots of black pepper (should have added more salt, I had hoped the butter and cheese was salty enough) and removed from heat as the omelette was getting done to put on the plates and drained the pasta, stirred it into the tarragon cream sauce and added more black pepper and shredded cheese on top of each plate after serving. It's been years, maybe a decade, since I made this dish, but I thought I'd give it a go again to show Esme.

Easter eggs

 Even though Esme has graduated high school, or very close to soon, I asked her to dye a few eggs with me.  Our eggs are already 'Easter Egg' colors, from having Americana chickens, but that just made it a science experiment which brown, green and blue eggs would change what colors.

 The yellow one was nearly purple-brown to start with, and the pink one was a pale green egg.  The left-most green egg was naturally green, and the one on the far right was brown to start with.

 I've done a little work in the garden, mostly checking on things, some sorrel and kale planted, seen beans that are coming up finally again after that freeze killed the other ones etc.  There are some cucumbers and squash plants and I planted another few seeds of zucchini.

Planning on making Esme something we haven't tried before - artichoke hearts, with a little bit of gruyere cheese baked on top - with egg omelets and Mark is making a bit of beef that be bought at the store.  So, waiting for that time to arrive to start making things.  We brought Grandma some chocolate for Easter but we weren't planning on making a full big holiday meal, just sort of a hodgepodge experimental type meal.

The artichoke hearts :  1 can of artichoke hearts, drained, and then put in a glass bread pan with olive oil sprinkled over the top, black pepper, salt, garlic powder, oregano, and then cooked in a preheated 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes or until the very edges begin to brown - sprinkle with shredded Gruyere cheese and bake longer until the cheese melts well.  Serve with omelet and Italian bread. 

 

I've been playing some more Minetest and working in the research mode to earn a few of the materials as 'creative' or free play items.  I'm sure you can see I've gotten this wood as one finally, and also the colors of stone that the houses are made of, sand and glass.  I've mostly stayed playing this world because the mining distribution has impressed me - and I've even been finding some things like fire opal and pink tourmaline that I have not found before in the years I was playing it.

Studying French mostly, and French from the Spanish interface on the other platform. 

 

Not a bad little village to hang out in, catch fish, rotate the crops etc etc.
 

Monday

 Over the work weekend, on to the week.  The truck started each of my work days, although the battery light never went off.  Does this mean I shouldn't have been worried last week?  No... because I can't see the future and I did have a legitimate concern.  It's still concerning.  But I am very glad and grateful that I was able to get to work on the days they had scheduled me.

Made spaghetti for Esme and I and leftover meatloaf bits.  Later, made a tomato quiche egg pie thing to put up a little for breakfast and to give the rest to the dogs as a treat.  It worked well.  Mark asked me if this was alchemy... is it black alchemy, in that I can't reveal the secrets?

 

No, it's whole wheat alchemy.

8 eggs

1/4 to 1/3 cup of whole wheat flour

some salt

some baking powder

3 to 5 tbsp of tomato paste (leftover from two other meals I made, and now I had this big glop left so I thought - we'll see how that mixes in)

baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

Doing minimum Japanese and going to bed.

It was a very long route day, with mail counting, and 100 degree weather and all that on top of it being Monday, which means we just have more mail than any other day usually.

The month in the week

 it feels like I've had an entire month packed into a week, it has been that busy - it is so hard to believe that Irene's sisters were here only a week ago, it seems like it was much longer ago, already...  I haven't even had many million-miles type dreams, to account for that time hop, as I sometimes do

Nope, just busy, and today is my first day off, since then

Yesterday, the postal route was my sixth in a row, and it was extra-long, as it was the day after a holiday.  Everyone seemed to be wanting to advertise something, so many bills to deliver, it was just all piled up en masse and I had to deliver it all.  We got out 'lucky' that there was only one package truck, not two - and still, I was out until 5:30 at night.  There were some days when I was first starting that I was out until 7 or 8 o'clock at night... and I've gotten much faster since then, there was just a lot.  I was a bit slower in the morning with my shoulder and arm hurting from that fall (on Monday morning, in my driveway, but not a bad one really) but I wasn't that much slower.. it was just a heavy load.

Esme and Mark had taken some of the greenhouse plants they have been working on out to the farmer's market again, and they made some good sales.  I had told them I would be out late, so they made cheeseburgers and were already finished eating by the time I finally got home.

After all that, and coming home and making myself some spicy avocado, tomato and black-bean tacos - I was nearly asleep on my feet at 8:30 pm, but I completed French, Spanish (on DuoLingo) and Russian (on Busuu), did the dishes and then fell over... and slept all the way to six a.m. this morning.

harvested a radish and some spicy globe basil that I had bought the plant a few weeks ago from a local farm - and it has tripled in size in my garden - used my little tamagoyaki pan to make an omelet with the produce (I should pick lettuce later today, as well.. but want to do that when I want to use it)

omelet :

heat up some olive oil and then add frozen onions and kale 

cut up basil and the good bits of the radish green, and the radish into fine bits

mixed with one egg from our chickens, and some black pepper

I added a bit more butter on top of the now hot mixture in the pan

waited for the butter to melt into the kale and onions

added the egg mixture over the kale and onions

cut up the cheese on my plate, toasted the bread in the toaster oven

flipped the omelet, laid the cheese on top of it

peanut butter on the toast

scoop the omelet out and lay it on the plate

I am working on French right now, will do other languages later - but we do need to go to town to get some chicken feed because now I work all through the weekend again. Have some small plants to put in Irene's garden - rescued from corners of mine, and some seeds I finally located - waiting for other seeds to come in the mail.  I am also waiting for a French student reading book to come in the mail - paid three dollars for it at a Goodwill shop - and hope that there are things Esme and I can use in it.  I have been giving her 'mini lessons' on our chat server from children's poetry and primers that I have found online.  She says she is looking at them, and has asked a few questions.  We've discussed she is taking Spanish next year (with the teacher who owns the farm that grew the herbs - coincidence!) and I can't help her as much with that (but I'll try) but I do have enough French to give her a rudimentary introduction - and it is her heritage, from my mother's mother - so I'd like to give her what I can there.  

We've also discussed getting rid of a bunch of junk up here in my studio and making her a desk area to put her school bag and charge her Chromebook for next year so when there are times she does want to be in the sunlight of the window there and read or work on homework it is possible - she might not use it - but I wanted her input into making an extra space, as her room doesn't have a window (in the underground part of the house) and Mark was concerned she spends so much time in the dark (hey, he does too, his office is also in that area, and also has no window).. but he was concerned for her 'vitamin D levels' *sigh* .. what do the French say c'est la vie?