Simple Sunday night dinner

Here is the menu for tonight:

Scallops on a bed of polenta.

Fresh steamed brussel sprouts.

Green salad of red lettuces, mizuma, walnut pieces, garlic vinegar dressing.

Fresh baked bread.

Here are brussel sprouts from the garden, just steamed for about four minutes. Nothing to compare to the ones you buy in the supermarket. These are so sweet and crisp!

I promised Grandpa Andy that I would not get food political in this blog. However, I must point out that anyone can grow a few vegetables, and what could be more local? Brussel sprouts, a member of the brassica family along with broccoli, collards, kale and other greens, are so easy to grow, no pests, very beautiful and bountiful. Not to mention, the very best you can eat for health! If you don't grow any vegetables you can visit farmstands or farmers markets or look carefully in your local grocery store. Whatever you do, you need to get the freshest possible vegetables you can.

Everyone needs to eat pure food, nothing processed, just cook from scratch. Eschew the middle aisles of the supermarket, perveyors of manufactured food with more than twenty ingredients (mostly fake and certainly sodium and sugar laden and fattening)

So, we eat these wonderful meals every day. It doesn't take much time or effort. Combined with major daily exercise, we are healthy and fit.

And collards growing in the garden are such magnificent artistic creations!

So, in addition to our very own sprouts, we have a wonderful salad of mostly red lettuces and red mizuma with tomatoes and walnut pieces.

For the main dish we have sea scallops that were frozen. You can get some quite excellent everyday seafood in the frozen food department of your supermarket. Just get a few of these frozen seafood packets- scallops, salmon, tilapia, tuna, whatever, and stash them in the freezer for a quick and delicious meal. Tonight G'Pa cooked the thawed scallops in a pan with about a teaspoon of butter, some lemon juice, and a bit of salt and pepper. He cooked some yellow corn meal (polenta) and we spooned the scallops over this.

The bread was made (by me!) from a New York Times recipe I saw in the Tampa Bay Times food section last week. So easy!

Let us know if you need more specific cooking directions and tips. Happy eating!

Saturday night leftovers

Here's dinner tonight for just the two of us. We are having pork ragu on a bed of pasta and a salad of fresh greens with apple slices.

The ragu: Grandpa Andy found two very small pork chops in the freezer. He cut them in small pieces, sauteed these in a tiny amount of olive oil with some diced onions and six cloves of garlic (he always uses a LOT of garlic). He found some leftover red sauce in the fridge (one of those tupperware containers I was about to throw out) and mixed this altogether in the frying pan. He put on a pot of water to boil for the pasta (which was a mix of leftover small amounts of twists and other shapes). I brought the greens for a salad from the garden. Tonight these were baby spinach leaves, a few chard leaves and some Asian greens. Andy added some apple slices and a handful of blueberries. We forgot to add some walnut pieces. Then he made a dressing of a bit of good olive oil, a splash of rice vinegar, salt and pepper.

When the pasta was done, about twelve minutes, he put it in a bowl and arranged the ragu on top. We set the table, lighted the candles and sat down to a delicious and very inexpensive meal.

So, here we have a satisfying meal, very nutritious, low fat, eye appealing.

A note on salads: We have salad every day and it is never the same! There is always a bed of some sort of greens. It can be any kind of lettuce or leaves you have. Then you can add other vegetables- tomatoes and cukes, of course. But also beets, turnips, fruits, nuts and grains. Your salad is the mainstay of good nutrition and tastiness.

We never have dessert unless we have company, and then Andy will pull out all his stops and make a dessert souffle or an apple strawberry tart. Yum!

So, just look in your fridge and see what's there. It could be the makings of a pretty decent and not expensive meal.

GrandpaAndycooks: imagination and a sharp knife

Some years ago when we were both working full tilt, I quit cooking! I had done it for so long, and I had no more imagination left for this task that happened every day. I hung up the pots and pans and that was it! I was up for the clean-up, but I no longer had any interest in the preparation of food. I had cooked through the infancy of my kids (Happy Baby Grinders), picky eaters, kids who had to eat on athletic schedules, and having to think of meals I would do after work that would accommodate the huge caloric needs of teenagers. I was done.

So, enter Grandpa. Here was a person who had intense interest in the joys of food. Soon he was doing the grocery shopping. He cheerfully accommodated the vegetarian needs of our last child and our family needs for only fresh whole foods.

We retired from our usual work and came to live in the country where we have an expansive vegetable garden -fodder for the chef!

The most amazing and cosseting thing to me is having someone cook for me and our friends. Sometime in the afternoon Grandpa asks me what I can harvest from the garden. Maybe it is beets, or kale, or carrots. Always greens for a salad. Maybe peapods. Whatever it is, that's great,( even turnips) he'll use it. When I go up to the main house from where I work in my studio at the end of the afternoon, I never know what's for dinner. Often I bring the salad greens, always different from day to day.

I wander into the kitchen full of wonderful smells. And I have no idea what's for dinner tonight! Heaven. I set the table with candles and flowers, paying attention to the table setting.

Tonight we are having a frittata with baby artichokes, garden salad with mostly baby spinach and some cucumbers and the last of our garden tomatoes. Left-over bread has become toasted delicious nuggets brushed with good olive oil and garlic. Just an ordinary supper.

What Grandpa Andy cooks is what anyone can cook. In this blog you'll get some recipes and suggestions about how anyone can make really good meals from scratch and imagination.

You'll learn how to cook healthy meals from scratch without relying on tedious recipes.

Stay tuned. Eating is a great adventure!