We sent my sister off to her dinner party loaded down with food last night. She had been to Ginnie Springs during the day with her boyfriend and a few other people, and asked if I would prep the creme brulees for the group. Surely, I said, and so I did. When she returned, they were ready to go and we finished off the rest of the prep: chicken breasts stuffed with asparagus spears and feta, the makings for a large salad, and cut up potatoes for garlic-parsley potatoes. Except for the creme brulees, everything else was cooked at her girlfriend’s place. The group finished off every scrap of food she took, and if that is a barometer of how things went, they went very well indeed.

As for mom and I, it was a snack-y, no good for you sort of food night. After cleaning up from Hurricane Aubrey, neither of us felt like cooking (or eating) much, as we’re busy with month end type of work. I broke out an emergency blue box of mac and cheese, dug a couple of hotdogs out of the freezer, and that was our dinner. As with the pizza from the other night, it’s been a long time since I had a hotdog. The last time, in fact, was the last Jaguars game I went to. That was the opening game of last season, and of course I missed all of the remainder of the season as I was too ill to attend. I have to say that even without a bun, that hotdog was tasty. So was the mac and cheese, an old standby.

Today I’m working on a couple of soups: cold cucumber-avocado soup and a roasted red pepper-sweet potato soup. The cucumber soup starts with two parts: a puree, with honey, of a bunch of cucumbers, and a marinated batch with rice wine vinegar and honey. Both of these need to sit overnight – the first to drain, the second to slightly pickle. For the other soup, after my break with a cappuccino and a Reese’s, it will be time to roast the peppers. Earlier this morning, I baked a sweet potato to add to it. Both should be delicious, and I’ll have pictures of the process later, of course.