A Day of Shinny Things and Vegetable Goodness

Last Saturday the Lady and I joined our friend at Beadfest.  Beadfest is a huge bead and jewelry making convention.  It was a lot of fun and they had ton of pretty beads and doodads.  I mainly went to hang out with my Lady and our friend as beading isn't currently my medium of choice for making things (I'm a words and yarn sort of guy at the moment).  Our friend is the one who's big into the beading.  This is a recent development  and now she is all in.  It was a lot of fun to see her lose her mind over all the booths selling things. 

It was great to spend time just the three of us like back in the old day.  We used to hang out all the time the three of us.  But now our friend has a kid and the Lady and I are dating, so we don't really have as much time to hang out just the three of us.  I want to make a more concerted effort to find opportunity for the three of us to hang out.

After the show and we said good bye to our friend I made us dinner.  The Lady is mostly a vegetarian.  Sometime she will eat meat, but some time the idea of eating an animal just weirds her out a little, which I totally get.  Knowing this I wanted to make her a delicious meal I knew she would like no matter if she was in the mood for meat or not.  I came up with a meal of Pan Seared Asparagus with Tarragon & Lime glaze, Jasmine Rice, Old Man Mitchell's Carrots and Pear chutney.

Pan Seared Asparagus with Tarragon & Lime Glaze

This Recipe is based off of one I found in Cooking light's April 2014 issue.  It's originally for green beans, but had an asparagus variation.  I took that variation and made it closer to the green bean version.

What you need:

Sunflower oil
8 ounces of asparagus
1 teaspoon of butter
1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
2 teaspoon of fresh tarragon
large skillet

Directions:

• heat pan over high heat for a minute or 2
• coat the pan in sun flower oil
• add asparagus to pan and shake till the asparagus forms a single layer
• without stirring let sit for 2 minutes or until asparagus in lightly charred
• lower heat to high medium and cook for another 3 and half minutes, tossing them from time to time
• turn off heat and let asparagus rest for 1 minute
• add the butter and toss till asparagus is completely coated
• add lime juice and toss till asparagus is completely coated
• cover with tarragon and toss till asparagus is completely coated, you can adjust the amount to taste

I have publish the other Recipes before and you can click on the link to get to those Blog posts:

Old Man Mitchell's Carrots

Pear Chutney

The only difference in the chutney is that I substituted pears for apples.

The meal was a tremendous hit!  The Lady loved the food.  It was also nice for me to cook for someone again.  It was the first time since my last relationship that I was able to cook for one person while they waited.  I didn't realize how much I missed doing that.  While I might not always have the highest option of myself and can be downright mean at time with the self-criticism, one area where I actually think that I excel is cooking.  I like to show the person how much I can about them by pouring those feeling into the food and the fact I can execute it at a high level is really nice.

I want to thank everyone who commented with such nice words on the last blog post.  It really means a lot to me.  I hope that my sharing my own experience, both good and bad, it can help people who are struggling with some of the same issue as I am.  Ultimately this blog is about making things both in and out of the kitchen, but as creative people so much of ourselves goes into the work it only seems right I share myself as well as my work.

Besides making tasty food, I'm currently working on the follow up to my comic Dangers of the Road.  It's still in the early stages but it will feature Sophie and her cohorts.  My goal is for it to be a an ongoing bi-monthly (eventually Monthly) comic that sells enough copies to be self-sustaining.  The time line would be to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund the first issue late summer/early fall, then publish mid fall.  Right now I'm doing a lot of world building and an early draft first issues script is with my editor.  The kick start will not be launched till the first issue is nearly done.  Even if I don't get the funding, this book will come out; it just might take a little (or a lot) longer without outside funds.

I'm also working on a short prose piece based off a writers prompted I did with my writing group.  It's still a number of edits from being done, but the first draft has been complete and once it is done, I think I'm just going to post it one line for free.

That's all for now, go make things.