Alex’s Supper Menu

Definition of a picky eater: someone who will eat a greater variety of food than Alex. In an effort to get our live-in granddaughter, Alex, more involved with our meals and the family decisions, we decided to allow her to select the menu for one dinner a week, figuring it would be a bowl of cereal or chicken noodle soup from a can (it has been banned as part of this exercise). She will on occasion be willing to try something new and I think it surprises her and us when she says she likes it. The next step will be to she if we can inspire her to want to help cook her meal.

For her first meal, she selected fish (crappie from the freezer) with lemon, butter, caper sauce which she’d tried here recently link, deep fried asparagus which she’d had while her parents were visiting over Christmas, and portabella mushrooms like the ones Bev stuffed the other day, but without the stuffing – hum. I was more than a little suprised by her meat and 2 veggie menu. Discovering she likes asparagus is new info and I told her to be prepared to be in hog heaven this spring, as my asparagus patch produces more than we can eat and it tastes light years better than store bought.

We have a basic beer batter (flour, egg, beer, salt) that we use for most things, but I decided to surf the net a little and found this one to use on the asparagus. For the portabellas, we just sprinkled with a little garlic salt and sautéed in olive oil. The originals were coated with olive oil, sprinkled with garlic salt, stuffed and baked, so it was pretty close and we all liked them. Here’s a picture of Alex’s plate.


I also battered and deep fried three cremini mushrooms and two pieces of fish to see how we liked them with the new batter - I believe it may be our new favorite. It has more flavors added and it’s lighter than our normal – kind of between it and a tempura. Here’s my plate with the experiments.


It made for a good meal and I’m looking forward to next week’s menu choices.

As an aside, we are far from wine connoisseurs, and most of what we drink is from a box (we’d go bankrupt if it were all $15/ bottle – but that’s another issue), but one of the ways we treat ourselves is belonging to the V. Sattui Wine Club, where we get two bottles per month of their choice of wine. We discovered the winery many years ago, before they were rich and famous, during a trip through Napa Valley and have always thought they make great red wines, especially cabernet. It’s not available in liquor stores here, and perhaps anywhere, so we have to visit the winery or mail order it. I’ve added this to today’s post as this month’s selection just arrived via Fedex.



We'll look forward to trying it shortly. Have a great day and I enjoy your comments and suggestions.

Larry