More cooking in the cottage

My kitchen

This is going to turn into a cooking blog if I don’t watch out. Maybe that’s not all bad. Tonight’s dinner was experimental and obviously needs work. But yesterday I asked Amy to buy scallops at Central Market—they came in a bag with ice, and she asked me what to do with it. “Just throw it in the sink? I said, intending to come right back, drain the ice (they tell you not to refrigerate with ice), and put in refrigerator for tonight’s dinner. Six hours later I found the scallops still in the sink, the ice now all melted.

At first I thought I’d go ahead and cook them. I remembered the tables upon tables of raw seafood in the fishermen’s huts at Seaview, sitting out with no refrigeration. But given my stomach problems I decided that wasn’t smart and reluctantly threw them away. Double tragedy because scallops aren’t cheap and I was really looking forward to them, and because it left me with nothing for dinner. I had found a recipe for baked eggs on spinach and decided to try it, though I have no way to bake.

Taste was good, flavors blended well, but I need to work on my cooking technique.

The induction burner cooks hot and quickly, and while I was waiting for the top of my eggs to solidify, the bottom was turning into hard-cooked egg—not the way I pref3er. The recipe called for a toasted English muffin (I tried to saute several baguette slices and burned them), bacon (frozen, so I left it out), and an egg—I used two for good measure. Obviously my limited cooking facilities and ingredients made a huge difference, but I think the recipe has potential.

I need the toaster oven out here but have avoided it for lack of counter space. The Burtons have my wonderful, handmade wooden butcher block in storage, and we’ll measure to see if it will fit in the kitchen area.

This was the kind of day that renews my faith in myself—I got a lot done. Finished reading a book for the Sarton competition and turned in the evaluation (hate that part of it) and did the internet search on the Ferris wheel. I know a lot about it and about Ferris himself from The Gilded Cage but needed to get facts and dates back in mind. I’ll do a guest blog on the wheel later in the month if you want to watch for it. But the whole story, with its impossible outrageousness, intrigues me. One of what I judge the better scenes in The Gilded Cage occurs on the original Ferris wheel.

So now I’m going to treat myself to a cozy mystery.