Chef Rebecca » Cooking That Brings Friends Together

Sunday again. I think Sunday is my favorite day of the week. I never feel guilty about hanging out chilling. Melissa sold 1 more loaf of sunflower seed bread than I had so I needed to make another batch of bread this morning. Woke up at about 3:30 and knew that if I got up now I could get the bread done before church. Started getting the ingredients ready and realized that…I don’t have enough milk, the only sunflower seeds I have are salted and roasted (recipe calls for raw) and I’m just about out of honey. So now it’s time to work on what substitutes I can use. For the shortage of milk, I had some heavy cream in the fridge and added enough water to get the right amount of liquid. I drained the honey out of the honey bear and had to scoop a little more out of the jar that had a little left in it. Because the sunflower seeds were salted, I cut down the amount of salt added to the dough then also added some raw pepitas (pumpkin seeds). Well the bread turned out great and since Melissa only needed one loaf (of which I made 6), we enjoyed one for breakfast along with some sausages and scrambled eggs. Now we’re off to church

It’s our anniversary Sunday today and it is so good so see so many extension pastors joining us from all over the globe. After church we had to make a quick stop at Lowe’s for some lights that had burnt out and Costco for a couple of last minute things as well as some fish for lunch. We had planned on doing a barbecue with the neighbors, but since they are leaving for Singapore on Tuesday and we are leaving to Northern California on the same day, we opted to nix the barbee. I did pick up some fresh Mahi Mahi and today we are jonesing for some coconut crusted fish with a lemon caper butter sauce.

Sorry I haven’t mastered the photo layout yet, but just wanted you to “get the picture”. The photo in the middle shows the fish in the pan, the one on the left is after I turned it and the one on the right is the final product.

Time for a nap and a Sunday afternoon movie. After a little rest, I decided that I wanted some blue cheese and crackers for dessert. Yummy! Next up is a soak in the jacuzzi and some coconut curry soup. Tonight I think we will add some shrimp to it. The shrimp doesn’t take long to thaw out, and once you cut it into bite sized pieces, it only takes about 5 minutes to poach in the hot soup.

Today is prep day for the big fund raiser for Melissa. That means cinnamon bread, sunflower seed bread, mini cheesecakes, spinach dip, ham rolls, etc, etc. Well, we started out with a coconut and a walk. I had picked up some fresh Mahi Mahi from Costco yesterday and Randy thought we should mix it up and have it for breakfast. So that’s just what we did. I put a little olive oil, salt and pepper on it and grilled it for 10 minutes. Let it sit while we steamed some zucchini. Randy seasoned the zucchini with ghee, salt and pepper.

Now it’s time to get to work! Faith Berry came over from next door and helped us get all our work done. We made ham rolls, cheesecakes, cinnamon bread, sunflower bread, spinach dip and bacon wrapped dates. I will need to make another batch of cinnamon bread and sunflower seed bread tomorrow – it takes time to make bread. About 2:00 Randy had to run some errands and thought I should have lunch ready, but alas I was still making goodies. I did start working on a meal. We have eggplant and I am making a meatball sauce to cook on the eggplant. My favorite easy meatballs – take some mild italian sausage, squeeze it out of the casing and roll into meatballs. EASY!!! Brown them in a pan with olive oil, add 6 chopped Roma tomatoes, a flower of garlic, chopped, some onion, mushrooms and spaghetti sauce and water. Add 2 bay leaves and simmer for several hours. To this I will add a roasted red pepper sauce that I make by roasting a red bell pepper, cleaning it, put it in a blender with garlic, oregano, basil and a can of tomato sauce. Once blended I add it to the meat sauce and we are ready to rock and roll.

Slice up the eggplant lengthwise in even numbers. I can usually get 6 slices out of each eggplant. Cover with olive oil, salt and pepper, then grill until tender. Put some sauce in the bottom of a 13×19 glass pan, put in eggplant sandwiches and cover with remaining sauce. For the eggplant sandwiches, mix together chopped kale, ricotta cheese, garlic, oregano and basil, then layer between 2 slices of grilled eggplant.  And of coarse since lunch didn’t get served until about 4:30, you guessed it, There will be no need for dinner.

This morning I slept in. Well, maybe I was just catching up because I spent a couple of hours up in the middle of the night. Nonetheless, I didn’t peal myself out of bed until 6:40 am. Yikes, at least I was up before 7! Today is a good walking day. We did the normal routine…coconut, dog running, and dog walking. When we went to Whole Foods yesterday, I was at the meat counter and ordered 12 slices of bacon. When I got home and put the food away, there were not 12 slices of bacon but instead, only 4. I guess we should just have the bacon and be done with it. In addition to the bacon, we had steamed spinach with a poached egg. Oh we added a couple of slices of cheese to the mix.

Today, Randy and I are working with a business colleague on a new art idea. So the rest of the morning was spent on that. Our colleague said that he would like to bless us (aka bless me) by not allowing me to cook and taking us out to the restaurant of our choice. He had mentioned the Kula Lodge, but we suggested Haliimaile General Store. Well, it was decided that this is where we will Lunch. When we arrived, we realized that we had not called ahead for reservations. What’s up with that? You never used to have to get reservations for lunch. It turns out that there was a tour company that arrived before us and had taken up half the restaurant. It was a twenty minute wait and the weather was pleasant so we waited. After all, it would take 20 minutes to get anywhere else, so we may as well stay.I don’t know if it was a full 20 minutes or not, the company we were keeping made it seem like a mere moment, but we were soon seated. The food was over the top as usual, and we were not a bit disappointed.

Back up to the house and a little afternoon work. The five o’clock work whistle whined (aka the jacuzzi starting its filtering cycle) so I knew it was time to quit “work” and start  “working” on dinner, that is. We had purchased a pasture raised whole chicken yesterday and I wanted to rotisserie it on the barbee. This morning I made a brine that the chicken has been swimming in all day. The brine was made up of 1/4 C sea salt, 1/4 C of Raw Sugar, a couple of bay leaves, some pepper corns, fennel seeds, 3 cloves, some garlic and the juice of 2 tangerines along with enough water to fill my stock pot about 1/2 full. I boil this together for about 30 minutes and then let it cool. I usually end up putting ice in it to get it to cool faster. This is a great time to clean out the bottom of the automatic ice maker – you know that part that starts getting stuck on the bottom. After it cools to room temperature, or at least not hot to the touch (you should be able to put your hand in the solution without it burning you), it’s time to dunk the bird. If there is not enough liquid to cover the bird go ahead and add more water. The brining is an important part of this process as it helps the final product to be moist and delicious. All those subtle flavors will come out in the meat.

Randy started up the grill while I finished prepping the bird. This basically entailed getting it all skewered up, securing the wings and legs with twine so they won’t flap all over the place and then slathering some ghee all over the outside. This makes for a beautiful golden crispy skin. After the grill heated up we threw is a few wood chips, turned the heat all the way down and started that bad boy turning. After about an hour, when the chicken juices are running clear, it is time to take it off the heat and let her rest. While the resting period was going on it was time to fix the asparagus. A quick steam and then chill down is all it needs. We cut up the chicken and sat down to a feast. Melissa’s friend, Sam, that works on the same YWAM base with her in Australia, joined us for dinner. If you click on the YWAM link you can see Sam – he’s the 3rd guy from the right in the green Tshirt.

Well it’s Sunday once again. Melissa helped me make breakfast this morning. It was kind of a clean out the leftover stuff breakfast. We started with some brown rice that we added cheese and soy sauce to. Topped that with a poached egg. Used up the last of the blueberries and strawberries. Split one leftover pancake 3 ways. and sliced up a pork chop. You didn’t know we had pancakes because Melissa made them one morning that she rose late and we were already done in the kitchen. She always makes interesting pancakes, never just plain. These were made with berries and chocolate chips. She then tops it with lemon juice and a sprinkle of powdered sugar. Apparently that’s how they do it in Australia.

After church we did a little shopping at Safeway. I was looking for red skinned Spanish peanuts. There are very few places where you can find this specific type of peanut. Everyone carries cocktail peanuts, honey roasted peanuts, dry roasted peanuts, etc. I was in luck – they actually had some in stock so I bought 2 cans. After doing a little shopping, we headed up the hill. Sunday is the day that we pick up our wheat grass for the week so it is the only day way drive up Omaopio. Once we got home, we decided that we wanted salmon for lunch, but it was frozen so we had to stick it in a pan of water to do a quick thaw. Here’s a tip for you. When you would like to thaw out meat and you don’t want to wait all day, put it in a pan of cold water. It is very important that the water is cold as you do not want to start cooking the meat before it is thawed. This will cut your thawing time in half. Along with the salmon we wanted to have some asparagus but we were completely out so we ended up having zucchini boats. The zucchini that we had was very skinny so I didn’t even boil the zucchini before broiling it.

For dinner it was time for some curry leak soup aka healing soup. I call this my healing soup because of the turmeric, garlic and ginger  that goes into it. Tonight I made it with some Japanese pumpkin. The great thing about this is how thick and rich it makes the soup to squash the squash into the squash soup. I also baked the last of the cookie dough. I think I should make a new batch soon.