Every free moment of my week, meaning those not spent playing with and tending to my girl, was spent working or cooking. Seafood stew, sausage and mushroom risotto, Chateaubriand with Brussels sprouts--you know, the basics... I must admit, I didn't plan my meals with convenience in mind this week, and it would have been the smart way to go.
Whenever I tell someone that I work for my husband's growing company, it is immediately assumed that I do the books. Nothing could be further from reality. This week, however, I got saddled with a monstrously tedious accounting project that involved comparing data from four spreadsheets and entering endless amounts of information into three more spreadsheets. I hate Excel. I also hate working with someone else's poorly conceived system, which is what I was doing, and I couldn't have been happier when it was finally complete at 10pm on Friday night.
On both Thursday and Friday nights, when I was feeling in the home stretch of my project, Matt helped with dinner. Thursday I ordered Indian takeout, and he went to pick it up while I worked. And on Friday, he actually took Ella to the store (one of maybe five outings alone with her during her lifetime, I kid you not), bought mahi mahi and eggplant (an odd combo at best), relaxed with a beer when he got home, and finally cooked a barely passable meal for us. I sound like an ingrate, but it wasn't until he left all the dishes (untouched) on the counter while I put Ella to bed (late) that I felt ungrateful. I still had to work for several hours, and when I was finally finished and he emerged from the music room to ask if I wanted to watch a movie, I said, "Well, I would love to watch one, but I have to do the dishes and it's 10pm. So, no, I guess you'll have to watch it by yourself." He silently helped me by scraping the plates off and soaking the fish pan. I let it slide. It was a stressful week for both of us.
Earlier in the week though, I was consumed with cooking in addition to the aforementioned spreadsheets. On Monday night, I prepared honey-balsamic braised Brussels sprouts and a delicious Chateaubriand steak marinated in shallots, garlic and red wine. Due to a scheduling snafu on Tuesday, I made two dinners: one for a friend who just had a baby and another for some new friends of ours, with whom we're learning we have a lot in common, including the restrictive diet Matt follows. Matt has ulcerative colitis and manages his health without prescription drugs by monitoring his diet and excluding sucrose and processed foods. Practically everything breaks down into sucrose, including grains (rice, wheat, pasta, soy) and milk, which leaves very little left to eat. He can have meat, nuts, fruits and veggies (in moderation because the fiber is hard on him), cheese, and yogurt if we make it from scratch and let it culture for at least 24 hours. It sounds a lot like the Atkin's diet with the difference being he can't have any processed foods like those marketed to Atkin's followers. So, it makes cooking a bit of a challenge. But, as I said before, he "monitors his diet," which is a nice way to say that his zealous for these restrictions is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. Somedays he just eats meat, while on others he can have rice and veggies and, on really long stretches of good health he can even cheat with pasta and wheat bread. But, he can never get away with processed stuff, baked goods, sugar or white flour. It's continuous deprivation.
Anyway, Matt turned one of his rock star buddies onto this diet after learning that he (let's call him Mike) has Crohn's disease, which is very similar to Matt's problem. On another (short) tangent, Matt's business provides websites and fan clubs to musicians. Enough said. Mike and his girlfriend have both been gung-ho on this diet for a month, and he told us on Tuesday that he's never been healthier in his entire life and has gone off all but one of his medications. We were going to have them over to our house for Matt's Mussels & Clams Revenge, an aptly named seafood stew that seems to cure Matt's ails and is restrictive-diet-friendly, but somehow we ended up going over to their house to make it. I'm not sure how that happened, but it made for an interesting night. Cooking dinner for new friends at their house--oh yeah, and he's a rock star. Everything turned out deliciously despite a few minor spills and messes, and we all had a great time. I hope we can hang out with them again in the near future, especially because they know how to make diet-friendly pizza (with an almond flour crust) and scones.
Back to my Tuesday... I spent it trying to coral my kid into the kitchen as I did the prep work for two dinners (risotto for my new-mom friend and the stew). It was a pull-your-hair-out kind of day, but somehow I got it all done. My friend called me yesterday to say dinner was wonderful, and it inspired me to make the risotto again last night when we had a new employee over. I couldn't get enough of the yummy dish, and also drank a tad too much wine as the conversation drifted into irritating territory. I'm still irritated because the guy arrived empty-handed an hour late, didn't compliment the meal (which, to throw modesty out the window, was wonderful) and left without even saying thank you. What is the world coming to?
I'm going to post the recipes for the dishes mentioned above in a separate entry, for lack of a better method. I'm sure I'll have more time to write this week, and I'm definitely planning to post PICTURES!
