dinner with the Katzees

So Mojo showed up with an art project for dinner at our house. I had spent the day nursing a migraine in bed and had little motivation for cooking...this was just the antidote. She arrived with a plate of julienned vegetables and several packages of fresh fish.

Soon Baba was put to work slicing with a precision only Ronaldo can contribute.

Next, we prepped the fish in an array of aromatics within a parchment heart. Here is halibut prepared with minneola orange slices, green onions, fennel and olive oil.

This is dover sole rolled with a mixture of rapini, garlic, lemons, olive oil and salt.

Mojo is showing off the sea bass with mojo verde (roasted/peeled poblanos, cumin, cilantro and olive oil), onions, tomatoes, olive oil and salt.

Bodhi played the joker and tried his hand decorating the salmon.

Mojo added her flair with zucchini, sliced garlic, shallots, onions, red peppers, fennel, lemon, fresh thyme and olive oil with salt.

Here is the next packet of turbo with celery, red peppers, shallots, onion, tarragon, garlic, olive oil and salt.
She also made jumbo shrimp with tomatoes, onions, garlic, lemon, mojo verde and salt with olive oil. We baked them at 400 for 4 minutes and 13 minutes at 375. She reminded me that if we weren't so difficult (both shane and I are on a weird diet) she would have added white wine and pepper to each packet.

Owen was sadly in absence, celebrating his good friend Paloma's birthday and missed out on the culinary adventure.

I contributed a big salad

some roasted brussel sprouts, brown rice and steamed asparagus.

Here are the steaming packets revealed just prior to our gustatory feast.

We finished the evening with baked apples, a couple of Bodhi games and flying with Mojo. It pays to have a chef in the family.

Comments

Coraggio

When everything looks bleak and the darkness cramps against the cold, it takes courage to simply look out from imagined isolation toward the wide horizon of beauty available in every moment. It takes courage to lean into the sea of life and trust the tide. When weary limbs no longer support us, it takes courage to trust our inner buoyancy and float. It takes courage, in the face of darkness, to remember the light and sit in all our apparent blindness and listen, silently, to the still, small whisper within. It takes courage, in that dark hour, when nothing else remains. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. A glimpse, a memory, a fleeting vision of a light so bright it blurs the borders of things seen and things perceived into a comprehensive wholeness of being. It takes courage.

tree digging

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grief

Grief is defined as a deep or intense sorrow. I have been thinking a lot about grief, about it's wide and sticky reach, about the watery quality of it's absorption and the agonizing effort of swimming to shore. Intense sorrow happens. It is a part of life. Yet we press against it. We try to eradicate it. How? We encapsulate our grief in a story, thus effectively removing us from the immediacy of the pain. The mind promises salvation and begins to tell a story, over and over and over. We listen to the inner ramblings, the constant diatribe, the neurotic attempt to avoid the experience. When someone is hurting we listen to their story, we talk about it, we recount our own story, but we certainly don't jump in the waters of sadness, instead we sit on the bank of our familiar longing. Once, when I was floundering in deep grief, my youngest brother knelt next to me and held me for over an hour. He didn't speak. He didn't commiserate. He just jumped in the ...

angelbirdflies

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