Find

I was just making a salad for lunch (maybe if I have salad for lunch every day this week I'll make it through all the lettuce...). As I was washing and drying the leaves, I happened to look behind the big recycle bin that's next to the trash. And there I found a 10 centavos coin, from Ecuador. I wonder how it got there? Rugenio Espejo is the guy pictured on the coin, with a nice cravat and all.

*please wait while hundreds of trained monkeys...*

Google finally had some pages (strangely unfound when I tried to search with initial caps. What's up with that?) about him. In Spanish, of course. I know no Spanish beyond Sesame Street level (oh, and a couple of words picked up when they had me proof a Spanish translation of a math book at work. It still entertains me that a right triangle is "triangulo rectangulo."), so I used Google's translation services... which lead to a bit more information, charmingly garbled (not gargled, as I originally typed) at the top, until it reverts completely to Spanish (you can read it here, to see such things as "Wonderful crust, its finding is aureoled of legend." :-).

So. Rugenio Espejo (Google translated his name as Eugene Mirror) was a doctor back in the 18th century who discovered a tree bark (worse than its bite, of course) with medicinal properties, and also founded the Ecuadoran national library, and their first newspaper, too. Interesting.

Improv cooking

I wasn't sure what I'd make for dinner last night until I got the farm veggies. Given all the green leafy stuff in there, I knew I had to make something rather green. A salad, for sure, to start on the mounds of lettuce (I've never found anything to do with lettuce other than salad; anyone have an alternative?). So, some red leaf, some green leaf, and some Boston lettuce in the salad bowl, then I added some minced hard-boiled egg, and three nasturtium flowers ripped up (a yellow one, an orange one, and a variegated red-and-yellow one). I liked how the colors worked.

For something more substantial, I sauteed onions and slices of carrot, then added the chopped-up bunch of collards. It took a while to cook down, then I added a pound of firm tofu, cubed and marinated in ponzu sauce. I supplemented that with a bit more soy sauce. I haven't made tofu in far too long; it tasted very good to me.

Tonight, I again wasn't sure what to make for dinner. I wasn't so interested in salad, having had that for lunch (though I could've made a different kind, with tomatoes, basil, and mango). Hrm. I thought about the huge bunch of spinach, and suddenly decided what to do (I love figuring things out while driving, and in time to stop for the last ingredient or two...).
I sauteed onions, then added ground turkey, and some nutmeg and black pepper. I washed and ripped up the whole bunch of spinach (a pound? more? I have no idea) and let that all get happy together. In the meantime, I made a pot of rice. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough jasmine, so I added some brown rice to supplement. I cooked that with a handful of pine nuts and half of a preserved lemon, minced. Once that was done, I added it to the meat, and tasted. Hrm. I hadn't paid attention to the brown rice needing more time than the jasmine; it was a bit too crunchy. Feh. I added water to the pot, and started it boiling. In the end, it's pretty good. The extra water has become a lemon-scented sauce. The lemon itself seems to have melted, leaving a wonderful lemony taste, but no bits particularly identifiable as lemon.

Of course, I seem to have yet again cooked to the size of my (big soup) pot... Leftovers for the next couple of days...