Ray's 2006 Cooking Experience, MwM & Jazz

No, this is not a joke. Yes, this is real food being cooked! Welcome to Ray's 2006 cooking experience, most likely the one time this year he will be cooking in the kitchen. I decided to create evidence of this one! Let me say that he is super-enthusiastic about grilling foods, unlike me, and there will soon be some grilling photos posted. But, for now we have Ray in the kitchen actually cooking - and we ended up eating at 1:00am. This is also a rare occasion because he is wearing black. I'll start from the beginning: Ray had three gigs on Sunday, one of which didn't get finished until 11pm and he wasn't home until midnight. He called on a break and I exclaimed happily that I was making dinner and it would be all ready for him when he got back. Jordan and I were going to eat before him. Well, that didn't happen. I decided to make up my own recipe by throwing (not limited to) chickpeas, black beans, breadcrumbs, carrots, onion, garlic, tahini, parsely and a bunch of other stuff into the food processor to create patties to fry on the stove. The mixture looked and smelled good but dry. I let it chill in the fridge for an hour or so and it was still dry. I added more tahini, but I didn't really know what else to do. I decided to take the formed patties and just fry them up, but while on the stove they quickly crumbled and it almost looked like ground beef- but not. It smelled ok so I just went with it, trying to form them and press them together. No such luck. Finally, I just browned the whole mixture, crumbs and all, and poured a bunch of not-photo-worthy-crap onto a plate. It smelled good and Jordan walked into the room, looked at it and said, "I'm not eating that...". I convinced him to just try it and we both agreed to not eat it.

I was upset and frustrated that 3+ hours had gone by, food all wasted, and my energy drained and no dinner. I paced around and didn't even feel like boiling water for pasta or quinoa, even though my mind kept telling me to. Ray got home and the look on his face when I told him there was no dinner wasn't great. He had a long day and night and I confidently told him there'd be food, when there wasn't. In this rare occasion, he stayed dressed, black shirt, pants and all (which is unusual at home), and cooked up some penne with marinara sauce and sauteed veggies. The meal ended up being great, as Ray makes better red sauce than me, but it was a long night... for both of us.

Moving on... Now we have Midweek Munchies for this week as well as last week's combined. The * means organic, as always.

And now let me leave you with some jazz photos. This is more Ray in his element, polar opposite from the photos above in the kitchen. From left to right we have Bob on trumpet/guitar, Shea on sax and many other misc. instruments, Ben on drums, Ray on bass and Tom on guitar. Notice the empty chairs? It was the end of the night and many people go there to dine, not like a jazz club.
And Ray on the upright, with Ben again and Jesse on vibes.
Fin.