The Gourmet's Return

Michael outdid himself last night: marinated broiled butterflied leg of lamb, served with herb-seasoned brown rice and a salad of freshly picked lettuces, lightly pickled beets, peas, sweet red pepper, and grated carrot, tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette. Dagmar brought a quart of fresh-picked strawberries, which I capped and lightly sugared and then served over thin slices of pound cake with a scoop of lemon sorbetto.We had a Malbec with dinner and champagne with dessert.
It is difficult to go out and spend much money on dinner when you can have really good food in your own house for so much less. Our trouble is that we really like going out as well, just for the experience, and we do go back to those places where we found good food. Sometimes there's a dish we either don't want to go to the trouble of duplicating or that, try as we might, we just can't duplicate. Thus, we have to go back to the roots of the dish and have it again in its native land.
Michael is one of those people who think that if you're not busy every minute, there's something wrong with you. He reads three newspapers in the morning and will sometimes read an article in a magazine like Time or National Geographic or Discovery in the evenings, but he's not really into reading books. He just finds it hard to sit still for that long. Even when he's watching the Orioles--as he is today--he is up and down. He'll run outside while KC is batting, or take a phone call and walk around while talking, or just go to the window to see what's going on in the neighborhood. Because of this and in order to avoid being thought of as a slacker, I've decided to start my day with a "chore" I want to get done. For me, that usually means emptying and organizing. Today, kitchen cupboards and drawers. It's amazing what accumulates in drawers along with the flotsam and jetsam of life: strange stuff that was once food, errant paper clips and rubber bands, two tiny screw drivers, chopsticks, a single edge razor blade. I'm lucky to still have a finger, considering how I found that. Anyway, those drawers and cupboards are now clean, newly papered, and reorganized. For a couple of weeks, I will once again know where to find the hoisin sauce and the peppermint extract, and I'll know just how many bottles of nose spray I have left until the next refill. I found a milk frother I forgot I had and an ice cream scoop that I'd never use for ice cream but  might use for cupcakes.
The next job  is to empty and rearrange the big freezer so that I can inventory what's in there and post it on the door. Every time I do that I vow to cross off each item as I remove it, and that vow is kept for just about exactly three weeks, after which I make no notations for several weeks and then realize that the list is totally useless. Still, I like doing it, so I will. But I might wait until tomorrow, because I think I've earned my reading time, not that I ever really feel guilty for reading--but I've got an answer if anyone asks why I'm reading or what I've done today. So there.