Tonight, laughing some, my Rwandan friend and I decided to try and cook dinner for the vegetarians sharing this big old house with us ...
You need to know that she had been studying and I had been working all day long ... that we're not vegetarians, that we have a ton of zucchinis and eggs that need eaten and well ... yes, these are disclaimers.
So I found a recipe that seemed like a rather delightful zucchini patty, using eggs too... as a bonus. The hens are all laying. There is this constant egg avalanche going down here.
We didn't take the excessive watery nature of the zucchini into account and ... the recipe didn't mention it either. So we grated zucchini, broke eggs, realised we were going have to take a hit because we didn't have baking powder in the house, chopped onions, smushed garlic, added chilli (to their batch) and cumin.
And I whipped up the little cherry tomato and feta cheese salad thingy that appears, quite oddly, in the middle of the recipe.
I can't even think of tonight's zucchini fritters without giggling. The excess of water made it seem like we'd added cheese AND as I cooked them, I had another of those 'recovered memories' of cooking in a previous life ... in a previous marriage ... in another country. I remembered that I used to squeeze the excess liquid out of the potatoes when making potato fritters, or pre-cook them ... never mind.
The vegetarians, the charming Aussie bloke from Melbourne and the lovely woman from Long Island, soldiered on and took second helpings.
I quickly wandered off and made a 'ohmygodi'msorryhere'sapavlova' dessert and all is good, here in this Wallonian world, that region where we completely lost touch with anything resembling summer. Tonight the house smells of woodsmoke and food. We had to bow to the weather gods and light the fire.
But last night's dinner ... now that is worth posting a photograph. This is what happens when a vegetarian cooks vegetarian food. It was stunningly good.
