Annika was sent home from school on Thursday with a 101.5 degree fever. By Friday morning, it was up to 102.7. When her dose of Motrin wore off Friday afternoon, her temperature spiked to 103.4. Fortunately, this is not considered a serious fever for a child (or so the pediatrician's office told me). I expected Saturday to be more of the same sick, whiny, clingy child so hot you could fry eggs on her forehead. Instead, she woke up with a temp of 99. I wish I could heal so quickly!
Annika was better, but still not well enough to attend the back to back birthday parties we had planned to attend. I planned to drop by one of the parties with Astrid still, but that left the evening wide open. I decided to make a special evening out of us being home-bound. I told Swede to pick a meal from Peter Berley's The Flexitarian Table. It is my "fancy" cookbook. The meals are delicious, but are more complex than in Fast Food Fresh (his other book) and consequently take longer to make. They are a weekend luxury.
Swede looked at me and said "anything I want?????" I replied, "sure, but if you choose something from the summer chapter, I might not be able to find the ingredients at Whole Foods." A couple of minutes later, I was on my way out the door to go to boxing class and I hear a voice call from the TV room "ooooh, short ribs!" "No! Something I eat!" I replied. Swede then complained about all the conditions I was now imposing on dinner. How selfish of me indeed, to want to spend over an hour cooking something I'll actually eat.
Swede settled for shrimp with brown butter and tons of herbs served over polenta along with roasted broccoli with parmesan.
http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/1377574-Shrimp-with-Brown-Butter-and-Tons-of-Herbs
http://mouthfromthesouth.com/roasted-broccol/
I used broccolini so I wouldn't have to peel the stems of the broccoli. I should have realized that broccolini is a bit more delicate than broccoli and checked on it earlier than the 25 minutes prescribed in the recipe. My broccolini was a little TOO brown and crispy, but still good. The crispy chunks of parmesan were delicious treats among the green (okay, greenish-brown) veggies.
The shrimp was delicious (I halved the butter sauce and polenta because there were only 3 of us). If you have never tried using brown butter in your cooking, you need to. Brown butter is rich, nutty, and (get this) buttery. You only need a little bit of brown butter for the flavor to really come through in the dish, so you can use it sparingly. But for God's sake, don't use a butter substitute - that would be heresy. The herbs mixed with butter gave it a robust savory flavor that lingered on the shrimp, but more importantly, oozed into the polenta making it delightful.
When making shrimp earlier in the week, I discovered something about buying and preparing shrimp. At Whole Foods, a 1 lb bag of peeled shrimp was $10.99. A 1 lb bag of "easy peel" shrimp was $5.99. I agonized over whether $5 was worth it to avoid peeling dead shrimp. Turns out it wasn't. I got the easy-peel shrimp and defrosted them. Turns out they are super-easy. The veins are already removed and the shell is split down the back. I turned the shrimp over to Annika and she peeled almost the whole pound herself. I am happy to have my own sous chef!
Back to last night's dinner. The food was excellent and my intentions were grand. My expectations, however, were unreasonable. Even though Annika was feeling much better, she was still whiny and annoying. As soon as I set the plate of food in front of her, she started shivering and cowering. "I'm afraid of the food," she whined. After 10 minutes of insisting she was scared of the food (all ingredients she had eaten before), she then began negotiating about how many bites she had to take. Then she climbed off her chair repeatedly and wandered around the table. Then she complained about being scared of the food. At least 5 times, I said "Fine! Don't eat! Just go to your room and go to bed then!" Every time she would promise to be nicer and more cooperative. Then she wasn't. All the while Astrid was refusing to eat her rice porridge -
spitting it out all over everything within a 3 foot radius.
Are these the Saturday nights I signed up for when I decided to have kids? It was too chaotic to even break out the sparkling wine I bought at Whole Foods back when I believed a dinner at home could be made special. Nor did I want to serve the Tammy Coe cupcake I bought at the store to share with Annika, feeling bad (at the time) that she had missed out on two birthday cakes that day. My mistake, as it turns out, was expecting to have a nice dinner by adult standards. Expecting some kind of sophisticated meal at home served only to set me up for disappointment. Next time, I will expect chaos and if it turns out a little bit better, I'll be happy.
I ate my half of the cupcake later and Swede and I drank the sparkling wine while watching The Book of Eli after Annika went to sleep. The night ended up being okay. Dinner, however, was a disaster. At least the food was good.
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