The tradition of the post-coital snack

Over the years I have enjoyed getting into my right brain and into the kitchen, well, after. I have had some of my most creative ideas when I still have those endorphins coursing through the synapses. The way it works, if sleepy potion doesn't get me first, is I look at available apparently unrelated ingredients in the fridge and pantry and free-associate.

One of my best was my Chorizo salad. I had ground beef which isn't even in traditional Chorizo.

There are certain ingredients that I keep on hand always usually with a back-up bottle. One of those is a Thai chili-garlic sauce called Siracha. I was aiming towards what the kids call egg and hamburger. It is a simple dish of browned beef (tradition would be pork) that you add Siracha and soy sauce then an egg or two at the end. Asians that make something similar add sugar, bean thread noodles and the egg is kind of a binder added at the end but not cooked through the way I do.

So Chorizo Salad started because I started the meat for an egg and hamburger that I was going to do something mildly creative like say egg and hamburger tostadas, or egg and hamburger and cream cheese pinwheels or, well ,you get the idea, I was just leaving the station with a direction but not yet a destination. As I started the hamburger, then rummaged around for the Siracha and found it out, and no back-up bottle. I started by adding:

chili powder,
cumin
garlic powder to the browning
ground beef and found I had
cilantro. (coriander leaves - fresh, minced.)I added that and the taste leaned Chorizo but not quite the right bite, not sour enough. As I finished it off, I deglazed with
plain white vinegar and voila! I had Chorizo (sort of). I was thinking burrito, but the tortillas were a bit stale for rolling so I had a synaptic flash and decided to cut them into 2 inch strips and then into slivers which I then fried, and salted with a basic season salt. The fridge yielded up some:
bib lettuce. torn
cucumber diced, found some more fresh
cilantro minced fine
red Bermuda onion, sliced paper thin. I plated it up as a house style salad on a dinner plate and then sprinkled on the still warm Chorizo, the tortilla crisps, and drizzled over the top Kraft brand Light Done Right
Cucumber Ranch Dressing

When I was young and very thin and considered by some effeminate looking I would get so mad when people would make comments about me looking anorexic. I thought at the time (wrongly) that anorexia was a diet gone awry and that girls (the most commonly seen sufferer) who had it kind of chose to starve themselves to be thinner. I didn't want to be thinner and would at times eat quite a bit and cared not at all about the calorie count of things. As an aside in therapy years later when I had finally at least gotten up to the weight of a slender man, I realized that the disorder (at least for me) is about not caring enough to feed oneself consistently. I realized that I am more likely to cook and eat well if I have someone to cook for. To this day I find that I tend to not worry about presentation if I am cooking for myself because I can see in my minds eye how it should be plated and well, I am just going to eat it. This is wrong thinking because food should please all the senses including the eye.

Dee and I have different requirements for dieting. She does best if she keeps her fat content low or non-existent, I do best on a modified Atkins style low carbohydrate diet. It seems not to matter to me when I eat as long as the cumulative count is right, she does better if she eats early and fasts through the snacking hours. As a result we have held off on the post-coital snack tradition, and if I do go downstairs for a snack, I cant bring myself to put a lot of effort and I don't usually snack wisely either.

Tonight after a particularly mutually satisfying time together, I mentioned that I missed making us our little snacks. Since it was already 2:00am, Dee agreed to 'start' her day then with a weigh-in and if she liked the results we'd snack on something healthy. She was so pleased stepping on the scale to find a new low for her as her 25th lb had gone.

Getting to work, I sliced some day-old crusty

French bread, spraying both sides with butter-flavored Pam and topped with:
Tomatoes, sliced thin and sprinkled with
Greek Seasoning.
Mozzarella, (fake fat-free, but not bad)

I placed on a fairly high rack in the toaster oven and toasted till top was just starting to brown and the bottom crispy.

Poured a saucer of

Balsamic Vinegar (My new favorite thing)

for dipping.

Served with "dove for" fruit truly ripe peach, nectarine, plum. grapes and a pear.

I dipped my pear in the Balsamic also, heavenly.