Pork and Clams with Enoki

After traveling for a month through the Prairies and Rocky Mountains, it's time not only to get back to routine but also home cooked food. We had many awesome meals, one of the best of which was room service at the Fairmont in Whistler - go figure. You expect good things at a Fairmont, true, but I wasn't expecting the room service to arrive to the minute when they told me it would; and, it was not only piping hot, but nothing was over or under done. We also had bison in Jasper, Elk in Banff, overpriced but fresh salmon from the market in Seattle, and unique Japanese dishes sukiyaki and okonomiyaki made by our friend. That just cannot last forever though.

So for our first meal after returning? Something with clams, says SO.  After some googling for ideas, pork and clams came up a few times - mostly either Portuguese or Chinese variations. We opted for the Chinese one, and likely thinking of the sukiyaki we had recently, SO suggested to throw in some Enoki mushrooms.

Pork and Clams with Enoki

Being a weeknight, we cheated on the clams and used canned. Given more planning and time, fresh clams would be interesting, if more work.

Next time: more mushrooms, more hot sauce or chilies, and maybe fresh clams

Me:8/10
SO: 8/10
SSO: n/a, he had plain pork and rice

Lemon-Roasted Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes

Sometimes it is easy to be prepared; you create a meal plan, or thumb through a cookbook ahead of time. Other times, you open the fridge in a panic and throw whatever is in the crisper in a pan and cook either rice or noodles. Somewhere in the middle is where this meal landed. SO grabbed some chicken from the freezer and put it on the counter to thaw during the day. This is pretty common for us, grab a random frozen protein and then, if we have time, look up a recipe or otherwise think up sometime to do with it. We will email each other the idea by EOD.  In this case SO also found a recipe, emailed it to me, and then I modified it as per what ingredients we had and what I felt like doing. Sometimes something sounds wrong or doesn't feel right, so I go on a tangent. Speaking of which (tangents, that is) I'll go on a brief one:  why is it that recipes call for so much darn garlic all the time. I like garlic, and have occasionally roasted a head, but often I'll see recipes calling for three, four, or even more cloves diced up. I personally think that is a lot. I'll usually cut the three or four down to one and it turns out fine to my taste. Anyway. Here is what the before picture looked like. It usually looks nicer.

Lemon-Roasted Chicken w/Green Beans & Potatoes (before)

The prep time is 10-15 minutes, but the roasting takes a while so don't try this last minute. I was surprised at how much the lemon infused its flavour into everything. As a matter of fact, I should warn you - if you don't like really lemony dishes, this is not for you. Also surprisingly, the chicken didn't dry out like I thought it might. The green beans were a bit mushy, but they were lemony. Still edible in any case.  Particularly tasty were the potatoes. Wow they turned out awesome. Here is the after photo:

Lemon-Roasted Chicken w/Green Beans & Potatoes (after)

Next Time: maybe some fresh herbs

Me: 8/10
SO: 8/10
SSO: 5/10

Peanut and Banana

I'm not sure how it is that I never thought of this before. I used to have peanut butter and banana sandwiches all the time, strangely. Near where I used to work was this sort of deli place in a food court. The cheapest thing on the menu was a peanut butter & banana sandwich. It was fresh bread, the peanut butter was thickly spread, and the bananas where layered in the middle. It came with a small soup, all for I think it was like $4.  Well it WAS the 90s.

Happy Breakfast - jam toast, peanut butter banana,
and a bit of watermelon.

Anyway, not long ago SSO's 6yo friend came for a sleepover.  The next morning, while trying to feed them some fruit, he insisted on having his banana cut in half and spreading peanut butter on it.  Brilliant! What a great way to eat bananas. I'm sure there are others out there like me, but I'm not the biggest banana fan. They are just hard to eat for some reason.  What a way to make it more palatable. While I was at it, I made the whole breakfast "happy".

Next Time: crunchy peanut butter?

Me: n/a
SO: n/a
SSO: 9/10