January in April???

I woke up on Monday morning with about three inches of heavy, wet snow. I was not surprised as my nightly bathroom visits had prepared me for this. All the arborvitaes were lying down and most of the low pine branches were bent and touching the ground. I was shocked, but not concerned. We (the arborvitae, the pine tree branches and me, as the Tree Herder) have lived through this before.

So, I headed off to work, through snow that had the consistency of a
Slushy from the Dairy Queen. I had a 10:30 AM meeting at the new building and the weather was much worse (windy, snowy and damn cold!)

It was about 11:30 when we were done and I was headed back to the "campus." I went by the Big Boy restaurant in Farmington and, on impulse, I pulled in for lunch. The wind is even worse and the snow is coming down sideways, BTW.

I ordered a cup of coffee, a large water and my favorite Big Boy dinner: Veal Parmesan with a side of spaghetti and a salad with Italian dressing. I topped the veal and spaghetti with grated Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes. It was very good!

I left a good tip, paid my bill and then headed out into the storm. I stopped in at Building Three to drop off some things to Michelle Pace. While I was there, Jake returned one of my soup containers. It wasn't empty, however. It was filled with leftovers from their Sunday night supper: Seared scallops on saut�ed spinach with hoisin butter sauce and rice.

So, I headed back to my building a happy man. I stopped briefly at home to stick my supper in the fridge. I got back to work just in time to chair the PM meeting (my boss is on vacation this week). Jake and I had several discussions throughout the afternoon on ways I could heat up the leftovers without overcooking the scallops.

I got home at 5:15 PM and the snow had stopped and was finally starting to melt.

I took out the scallops from the container and reserved them. I carefully put the spinach and rice in my smallest pot, put a lid on it and stuck it in the oven preheated to 170 degrees F. (or "Warm").

Then I got to work. The last time I made chicken stock, I didn't use the meat. I just stuck it all in a freezer container, covered it with stock, labeled the jar and stuck it in the freezer for some other day. I had taken it and another quart of stock out over the weekend for today's snowfall. Nothing says homemade soup like a blanket of snow!

So, I diced up two peeled carrots, two stalks of celery, three cloves of garlic and a medium sized onion. All that and a bay leaf went into olive oil already heated in my smallest stock pot. I stirred and saut�ed them all until the carrots had softened, but nothing had browned (about eight minutes). Then I added the chicken stock and the chicken in stock containers (along with some extra stock to try and get two full quarts of stock). While that was coming to a boil, I cooked eight ounces of Kluski noodles in salted water. When they were al dente, I drained them and added them to the soup. I turned it down and let is simmer for a while to get happy.

Now, why not cook the noodles in the soup mix? Simple. You don't normally add the pre-cooked chicken until the very end (so it doesn't fall apart). But, I had no choice since the chicken was already in the stock. So, rather than boil the soup and chicken mixture for seven or eight minutes, I chose to cook the noodles separately.

Meanwhile, I added the now room temperature scallops to the pot in the oven and kept it on warm for another 30 minutes. Then I plated my dinner. It worked!! The scallops were still beautifully cooked (you can easily taste an overcooked scallop as it has the consistency of rubber). And, the hoisin butter sauce gave it all a distinct Asian flavor. Excellent meal! I ate it all, but I figured it was all healthy stuff. Thanks, guys!

I went back to the kitchen and turned the soup off. Then I started on cleanup. With that accomplished, I started filling the freezer containers with soup. It was as I feared: it's too thick. So, I did the container for my Mom first, putting as much broth as I could in it. I labeled that and stuck it in the freezer. I filled the next three containers 3/4 full, put them in the fridge and took out another quart of chicken stock to thaw (that takes at least a day, BTW). Tomorrow, when I have liquid stock, I'll top off each container, label it and freeze it.

I went back in the bedroom and watched taped cooking shows from the weekend until bedtime.