Les Bonnes Choses

Last week, Gill came over for some social interaction, as her roomie was off in the 'Peg buying a house or somesuch. I ordered a Homemade Pizza with my favourite fancy toppings: roma tomato, basil and prosciutto (my other favourite topping combination is pepperoni, bacon and green pepper). This isn't really germane to the story, but I just wanted to set the scene.

We watched The Social Network, which was a fair movie, though I don't think it was in the same league as The King's Speech. They definitely made Mark Zuckerberg out to be an ass; I found this to be an interesting observation, as I found his character to be similar in many respects to my inner monologue. Early in the movie, the Zuckerberg character is creating some kind of juvenile prank website over the course of an evening, and drunk-blogging about it as he goes along.

That's the inspiration of this blog entry. Except I'm not drunk, and I'm not making a prank website. Instead, I'm doing something much more practical: I'm making dinner, but don't really have a plan. Let's see how this turns out, shall we?

• 16:45 - What am I going to have for dinner? Everything's frozen. Crap. Seafood and chicken breasts defrost pretty quickly in running water. Both combine well with linguini. Let's go with the frozen scallops because I seldom have them (Rebecca hates them).


• 17:05 - So, scallops are defrosting. What goes with scallops? Bacon-wrapped scallops are tasty. And bacon is in a carbonara sauce, isn't it? I'll also need some kind of sauce or something...


• 17:30 - Basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon and garlic. I have no idea if this is going to work with the bacon, but I've mixed up a thin paste with these ingredients. I plan on tossing the scallops in them and searing them in a cast-iron skillet on the BBQ so as not to stink up my house again.

Earlier in the week, I made seafood, and the house ended up smelling more like a wharf than I would have liked.


• I should have patted dry the scallops.


• 17:57 - Bacon has been cooking for the last 10 mins on the BBQ on the warming rack part where you normally put your charred hotdogs. I decided that I'll roast some veggies to go on the pasta. Went with grape tomatoes, orange pepper and garlic. Not sure if roasted garlic counts as a vegetable.


• 18:05 - Remember the charred hotdogs I just mentioned? It turns out that more than 10 minutes, even with indirect heat, will leave your bacon in about the same state. Bacon do-over. Resolve to be more vigilant. Eat the charred bacon anyways.


• 18:09 - Bacon cooking again. Scallops searing. Pasta cooking.


• 18:20 - Dinner is served.

Conclusion: garlic does not work well as a vegetable, even when roasted. Everything seems to pair well with bacon.