reduce!

I'm talking about several things here, but mostly I'm talking about ambition. We got up very late today. Last night found Mara entertaining Matt/Lucy/Maya and a random stream of housemates with her maiden puttanesca voyage, and then after midnight bringing the augmented leftovers to the doorbell-ringing Jazzcafe hordes below; across town I was playing eight straight hours of Risk with two other vastly more experienced

dorks
gentlemen (TWO TIMES was I literally one roll away from a shocking underdog victory, both at midnight and at 1:30am or so. But I faltered, was surrounded, and shortly thereafter all was lost. Fucking Egypt).

So after getting up at noon, we both thought, "Hey...let's just take it easy today (kind of an inside joke) and make a nice dinner later".

Sounds great. So we dug around to see what needed using and kind of only came up with frozen banana leaves. But the direction was obvious: "Let's do bali burgers! Wrapped in banana leaves! Yes!" How times change: when we first tasted this recipe we hadn't heard of half the ingredients. Now we had almost everything in our cupboards or freezer already, minus lemongrass and fish.

Fast forward 3 hours. Sun. Hotness. "Ehhh. Do you really feel like doing all that?" "Ehhh. No." And so, behold the "Blackened" Catfish Salad (this refers to seasoning only: when it comes to cosmetics I am a blackening skeptic) with feta and a not-yet-poured "Creole Mustard Vinaigrette", I kid you not:

Unpromising looks aside, it tasted exactly like something you'd get at Applebee's, which is not an effect I usually strive for, but it was kind of comforting. I mean, I got the recipe from the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, so really what did I expect.