It’s time to clean out the vegetable freezer.
It’s almost empty now, anyway. I usually defrost it around the first of March and turn it off until June when I start making soup from the excess spinach.
By September it’s so full I couldn’t squeeze a stray sage leaf in.
As usual, the last few bags are tomatoes, in this case cherry tomatoes.
I had so many one day after picking that I just froze the lot, whole, and put them in freezer bags.
When they’re thawed the skin slips off and one has peeled cherry tomatoes which are great for a sauce.
In my case I had a bag of yellow ones – thus the color….
Baked Cod with Tomato, Fennel & Leek Sauce
Total time: 25 minutes
Ingredients:
- 12oz (360gr) cod, halibut, or other firm, white fish, cut into 3 or 4 pieces
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 1/2 tsp lemon pepper
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp za’atar
- 1 cup (8oz, 240gr) tomatoes, peeled, chopped
- 1 leek, trimmed, sliced
- 1/2 small head of fennel, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup olives, black & green, pitted, cut in half
- 1 tbs olive oil
Instructions:
- Place fish on a baking sheet.
- Brush with 2 tsp olive oil. Sprinkle with lemon pepper, paprika and za’atar.
- Bake fish, 400F (200C) for 15 – 20 minutes, depending on thickness, until done. Fish is done when it starts to turn opaque and flakes with a fork.
- Heat a medium skillet over medium heat. Add oil, leeks, fennel and sauté until tender, 6 – 8 minutes.
- Add tomatoes and cook until they are soft.
- Add olives and heat through.
- To serve spoon Tomato Leek Sauce onto a platter or 2 plates and top with fish.
The convalescence is officially over….
No more lounging around the fire, binge-watching Netflix.
This morning, mon mari got to do his least favorite thing in the whole world: plumbing repair.
Last night, as I was finishing dinner and we were enjoying a glass of wine, mon mari noticed a small waterfall coming from the cabinet next to the sink.
Not the one under the sink but next to it.
The water was rapidly covering the kitchen floor.
I ran for the mop and bucket while he tried to figure out what was happening.
The water stopped flowing and he realized that it was from the drain pipe rather than the water pipes. As long as we didn’t drain any water out of the sink we were fine.
It was the big, corner, hard-to-reach, cabinet where I store all the Christmas plates and other stuff that rarely gets used…. The one that I have to almost crawl into on my knees to reach the stuff in the back.
We emptied it out, wiped down the shelves, took the doors off so it could start drying out, finished mopping, poured more wine and had dinner.
This morning he tackled the plumbing repair and I left to do the shopping.
I decided he needed a peaceful environment….
Apparently, we are not leaving enough food out for the mice to steal and they chewed a whole in the drain tubing.
Don’t ask me how. Over the years I have developed a great respect for the ability of mice to eat through anything.
It’s all fixed, everything is dried off and replaced in a very clean cabinet.
Life is, once again, back to normal.
Oh – the kitchen floor is clean, too.
Our current home is modular. Not a mobile home or manufactured which are different. This one was built one box/room at a time then all put together like legos. The piping they used is…questionable to say the least. I opened the door under the sink a few weeks ago to grab something and the water was almost an inch deep. O_o! Unfortunately, the black plastic piping they used doesn’t glue together well (this is not the first time we’ve had problems) and every time the sink or dishwasher drained, the water went into the cupboard. I had to do the same thing. Everything came out, some things got tossed because they were soaked (Comet comes to mind) and the hour long repair commenced. But my cupboard was sparkling when husband was done!
Sorry, didn’t mean to write a book. And I agree about the mice. They can chew through anything if given half a chance.
nighstmusic, I’m just so glad that it happened when he was here and not in the hospital lol. When one lives in an old house / barn, one has mice. Fact of life. Mice chew – also fact of life,