Grand Adventure

Well, yesterday was my 44th B-day. I got a surprise call from Greg who gave me the option of having the birthday song sung ala Donald Duck or Marilyn Monroe. MM is the more classic of Greg’s celebratory singing on birthdays…and DD would have had me laughing too hard too early in the morning.

Shelley and I took the plunge and tried a recipe from one of our Food Network shows. My favorite show next to Diner’s Drive-ins, and Dives. Alton Brown does this show called “Good Eats”. What I enjoy is he educates about food properties and cooking techniques while he shows off one or two recipes. Think “Science Guy meets Julia Child”.

We both latched on to the episode about pork tenderloins. In particular, the Pork Wellington. I didn’t want to taste the apple with my pork, so modified Alton’s recipe to stuff the inside of the pork with green olives and mufaletta mix. And I added some fresh mushrooms at Shelley’s request. The result was quite good. The only negative was I didn’t have a wire rack to let the wellington cool on, so the juices made a muck of the bottom of the pastry. Big lesson learned.

Here’s what a pork wellington sort of looks like:

We took our time yesterday, and this week marks the end of the shed project. All painted, stained, with shelving in and with the initial items we want to put in there (for now). The paint motif matches the house, pole barn, etc.

And the shelving, including a clumsy attempt at a fishing pole holder system:

Almost all of our big projects are done, and it feels good to ramp down a bit. If the weather wasn’t so flipping hot I’d be doing fun mini-projects like cubby holes for the shop to store tools, etc. Oh well.