Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

I have some weird ones: cycas bifida, zamia fisherii, bowenia serulata, ceratozamia mexicana, ceratozamia hildea, and a gorgeous dioon edule palma sola.

The only macrozamias that I have are communis

 

Stuffing bell peppers with rice and ground turkey topped with marinara sauce for dinner tonight.

The Reds had every opportunity to win today, but decided that it was unmanly to ever bunt.

 

Like you I have a lot of Zamia furfuracea, also called cardboard palm. I have a huge one in a pot that I need to plant.

You have some nice plants. I also have a Cycas circinalis that just gets by because up here we get freezes. It should live further south. It grows for a couple of years and then gets frozen to the ground.

 

I saw some really old ones near the New South Wales/Queensland border in the mountains back in 1992.

 

I am making a soup with collard greens, ground pork, ginger, and assorted other things like fish sauce, Sichuan peppercorns, wide rice noodles. There are more things in there. I usually make this with mustard greens, but I couldn't find them at my usual sources. I will just have to cook the greens a bit longer.

Sichuan peppercorns are kind of weird. They are not hot, but they numb your mouth. Also a tiny bit gritty.

I also started marinating chicken thighs for jerk chicken on Saturday. Instead of Scotch bonnets I use datil peppers for the heat when I make my jerk sauce. Similar heat and datil peppers have an even stronger citrus flavor.

Tomorrow is warming up leftover pasta Bolognese. I have a Zoom memorial service to view from 5 to 7, so no cooking then.

 

Back to food.

I will be firing up my KJ in "divide and conquer" mode to grill some jerk chicken. I really wish that I had some allspice wood for the smoke, but I don't. I just use a lot of allspice in the marinade instead.

I like that I can set half of the grill low and direct and half high and indirect because that is what you really need for this dish. It would be great to have two KJ's for cooking for a lot of people because then you could set each one up independently.

And it is what you need for searing a steak and bringing up to medium rare much slower. A few minutes down low and then as much time as it takes up high.

I should start some collards because I have some. Not the same as callaloo, but close enough.

And rice, of course.

But not pigeon peas because my wife hates them.

Added in edit: I did make the collards and they were really good. And I got to use up some bacon that needed to be eaten and a bit of onion that was just sitting around. Good food and cleaned out some of the fridge!

 

Tonight was a salad made with lots of stuff that needed to be eaten soon or thrown out. Some bits of red onion, red bell pepper, English cuke, green beans, arugula, bibb lettuce, radishes and the like.

And a simple oil and vinegar dressing.

It was great.

 

Jambalaya tonight with two left over jerk chicken thighs chopped up and smoked Texan kielbasas.

The jerk chicken thighs were incredible.

 

My Dioon edule palma sola has a foot of trunk and is almost as high as my 6 foot 2 inch head.

My really old dioon edule is a variety from much further north (palma sola is from near Veracruz) and was one of the last ones legally taken from Mexico. I have all of the legal paperwork on it. It is now producing lots of "pups". It is very happy in my yard. It is a female plant and so is my palma sola variety, so no viable seed ever.

I have two Ceratozamia hildea with a male and a female that cone every year, but I guess that I don't have the right insects to pollinate. I have yet to get viable seed. Maybe next spring I will intervene to get viable seed..

 

Back to dinner.

My wife will be making asparagus risotto as she is genius with it.

I can make it, but she makes it very well.