weekend update, March 2, 2014

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, 

if one has not dined well.” 

Virginia Woolf

Think about this- if you could invent any academy, and receive from them their highest accolade, what would that prize be? Would you pull some strings and become balloon queen?

I am not making this up. This is really a thing.

Would you invent a society of reptile wranglers, and hope someday to win

The Captain James T. Cook award for
excellence in crocodilian crowd control?

Or would you invent the golden ear academy of conversational arts and hope to win 

the coveted fiesta phone?

Me, I dream of achievement in the field of achieving. That is, I'd like to win a prize for most unfinished projects actually completed in a year. And I know just what I'd wear to the awards ceremony....

but it's not quite finished yet....

Here's a thing that's missing from awards shows like the one broadcast tonight: dinner.

no, not the crazy Oscar's after party dinner.

The real dinner. The dinners that made it possible for everyone from leading actors to key grips able to do their best work. Not the chefs, the cooks. Not the superstars, the support players. Because even when dinner isn't the star of the day, it's always one of the day's main supports. Eating well at least once a day is like, well, it's sort of like

And as we all know, when you try to do good work without the occasional support of a good dinner....

things get a little messy.

That's what I was thinking this week, as we ate our way through a series of award winning recipes. Some of them turned out to be real stars- here are the nominees, and the winners:

You know those award winners that leave you wondering how bad the competition was? That's this meatloaf:

It was....okay...but chances are, if you're reading this, that you've made at least five meatloaves that were five times better. It was a puzzler, until I realized that this meatloaf, which is about one-quarter oatmeal, had won its prize from the Quaker Oats recipe contest. So, it's not a great meatloaf, it's a great way to use oatmeal. 
From there, it was on to the Caprese Cod Sandwiches:

which were also okay.

Perhaps this unexpectedly nice mix of fish and cheese would've been better served on top of salad greens. Calling it a fish sandwich invited too many comparisons to a girlhood favorite:

McDonald's filet-o-fish.
Though I don't think I'd like one now,
these childhood loves die hard.

Here are the prize worthy prize winners of the week- this unexpectedly delicious and amazingly easy tomato-basil soup with a grilled tomato and mozzarella sandwich:

20 minutes, start to finish. Easy peasy to prep in advance,
and really yummy.

And the surprise winner? Triple chocolate chili:

Okay, it may have helped that on the day temperatures in Dallas dropped 70 degrees in 24 hours there was a pot of chili simmering on the stove... No, actually, it just really tastes good. The first part of this recipe leads you through making a sauce with dried chilies, chocolate and spices- this sauce is similar to mole sauce (that's mole-ay, a sauce made from chilies, spices and cocoa, not to be confused with mole, 

a sauce made from burrowing rodents.

If you want to try the recipe, but don't want to spend all day on it, try using canned beans and a prepared mole sauce. Really, this is a great chili, thick, rich, not too spicy, not too tomatoey- a perfect dinner to see us through what we all hope is the last blast of winter.

It made a massive quantities though, so I have a feeling it'll be playing a lunch time supporting role for the next day or two at least.

Tomorrow, when the world is buzzing about who won what and who wore what, try to remember how much it matters.

Not the Oscars- the Oscars only matter because art matters.

Try to remember that the things you do 

to nurture the people you love,

your willingness to support them with the best you have,

your efforts to give them what is excellent.

that matters.

I hope this week you feel rewarded for that.

I hope your audience stands up

and applauds a job well done. 

but even if the work is not well done

or well noticed- 

It matters that you keep going. You never know- 

You might be feeding superstars.
And one of them might be you.