A surprisingly nice day

How can someone who works only three days a week seem to have no spare time? I don’t understand it. It must be evidence of great disorganization! Or maybe over zealous plans and expectations. My goal for yesterday was to clean my bathrooms, and otherwise sit around reading and knitting. As usual, after a period of dearth, all the library books I had ordered came in at once. Why does that always happen? In order to get them done on time, I must now read incessantly and do little else. As to yesterday, I didn’t clean bathrooms at all, and did very little reading. My friend Paul invited himself to dinner, and I coldly said “No!” “We can just have a cup of tea for dinner,” he said. “Well, okay,” I replied, “but I don’t have time to cook much.” Of course, once I got going on the cooking, I over did it, but it was worth it. I had a pleasant day in the kitchen and a delightful evening with Paul. I was planning to make a salad and a ratatouille like dish, and that really was a meal in minutes. Had I done only that, I could have cleaned the bathrooms and made some headway on my library items, but it is such fun to bake bread, and why not make a little dessert and another salad as well? I had a pineapple, given to me by a friend, and that was to be the basis of my salad, along with the two mangoes and strawberries I had gotten the day before. When opened, the pineapple was a dry cardboardy like thing, completely flavorless, and the mangoes were decidedly not ripe. Oh well. Give the pineapple a toss, and make do as well as can be with the mangoes. I had a bit of wine open, and so mixed up what ingredients I had. It turned out to be one of the best salads I have made in many a day. The mangoes, while not ripe were flavorful, and I think it was better without the pineapple.

Here is a picture of Paul politely being ecstatic over his ice cream, and another of him simply being adorable. And here is a recipe for the salad. There is no basil in the picture because we had eaten it up. So yummy!


Surprisingly Yummy Salad

One mango, sliced up nicely
Strawberries, about eight of them sliced
An orange, a nice big sweet one, segmented and with membranes removed

1/3 cup white wine, in this case chardonnay
About 3 teaspoons sugar
About a tablespoon of orange zest from the above orange

A few basil leaves, cut into thin strips ( I am sure there is a proper culinary word for this, but I don’t know it.)

Mix the prepared fruit into a bowl. Add the zest to the wine. Add the sugar to the wine a teaspoon at a time until it is just beginning to taste sweet. Pour it over the fruit, and let it sit for an hour or so. At serving time, sprinkle the basil leaves over it. Mmmmmm!