Cooking to Die For*

 Being the gourmet cook that I am, I choose my olive oil very carefully.

 It took a good five minutes to make the selection at Payless (grocery store, not shoe store) last week.  I had two stringent criteria:  1.  It had to be a small bottle so I could use it all before it goes rancid,  2.  The price had to be reasonable as far as olive oils go.  However, many bottles fit those requirements, so I made my final decision based on bottle appeal:  I chose the prettiest bottle.

Last night I opened that lovely little bottle of Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil and carefully dumped a bunch of it into the frying pan.  Sunday night's gourmet dinner involved precooked Wild Alaskan Salmon Patties, which I am pan frying.  Things were a poppin’ and a sizzlin’ and almost a smokin’ before I thought to turn the heat from high to low. 

For that extra variety that is a hallmark of gourmet cooking, at the last minute I tossed in the leftover breaded chicken patty from the deli.  Along with our pan-fried protein, we had fresh-boiled green beans from the garden and leftover salads from the deli. 

Mom enjoyed her usual heated-up cup of Kirkland Cafe Frappe while John sipped his four ounces of cheap strawberry wine and I threw back my four ounces of sweet Riesling. 

This lovely dinner came together quite effortlessly, unlike my labor-intensive cooking of years ago when everything was beans and brown rice.  I had a lentil burger recipe to die for, but somehow everyone survived.






*If you take me seriously, there is something seriously wrong.