It's cold here today; the kind of day we used to call “raw”. The temperature has been around 43°F (5°C) all day, the humidity has been high most of the day, and the wind is howling. We got almost a quarter inch of rain last night (but no more expected for at least a week, dang it).
So it was the perfect day for soup. Debbie and I made tlapeno, a clear-broth Mexican chicken soup with garbanzo beans, carrots, potatoes, and rice. The broth is flavored with smoked chipotle peppers, and we serve it with a topping of cubed avocado, chopped fresh cilantro, and thinly sliced green onions. For ours, we substituted turkey meat and homemade turkey stock. Wonderful stuff!
We had fun making it, too – not least because of the assistance of our four-strong canine cleanup crew. For example, as I was preparing the carrots, the dogs ate the carrot ends I cut off before they could hit the floor. They didn't like the potato peels very well, but just about everything else was a hit – even the cilantro!
Yesterday the day was so lovely that we changed our plans and headed up for one of our favorite drives: forest road 14S05 from Pine Valley to Laguna Mountain. This one-lane paved road starts off in some of the prettiest sagebrush country around, and wends up over a few miles through various chaparral and riparian scenes, including a square mile or so of ground-cover manzanita that are only a couple of feet tall. Eventually it ends up in the pine forests of Laguna's heights.
Before we turned onto 14S05, though, we checked to see if Frosty Burger in Pine Valley was open. And it was! That meant we could enjoy a treat: the best fish sandwiches we've ever found in San Diego, along with the best french fries. Frosty Burger is a little mom-and-pop shop that makes great old-fashioned fast food: burgers, shakes (including malts), french fries – and an unreasonably good fish sandwich made with cod. Yum!
By the time we got home, we weren't hungry enough to make a meal. But we had previously purchased a pint of beautiful blackberries. So I whipped up a zabaglione sauce (about 5 minutes work if you've never done it, and a first-class dessert) and we had zabaglione sauce over those luscious blackberries. Good enough to make your brains fall out!
The zabaglione recipe calls for four egg yolks, which meant we had four leftover egg whites. What to do with them? Why, whip them together with a little heavy cream and some nutmeg, and you've got the best dog treat ever invented! I did that, poured it into the dog dishes, and stood back to watch four dogs try to inhale their treat. Happy dogs!
Freaked out, he shined his light around frantically, looking for the source of the voice. Finally, in the corner of the room, his flashlight beam came to rest on a parrot.
"Moses," replied the bird.
