Ben's Day Wednesday

There’s No Place Like Home

Posted on by Liz

From mid-April through May, our house is a little crazy every year. Phil is in the midst of banquet season, Ben has swim practice, and his play practice amps up fast before they perform the first weekend of May. He is the Wizard this year in the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know if they are sold out yet, but tickets always go fast:

https://ctlshows.com/season-46/

My days are pretty packed, too. Every minute is spoken for from 4:30 in the morning until supper has been made. After that, I may or may not have other obligations or activities. Anyway, we’re all busy, so trying to squeeze in some cooking time with the Wiz can be a challenge. When I tried to make a menu this week, I realized that in an eleven day run, there were only three days that didn’t have one or more of us running off before, during, or after supper. Our busy run is not something shocking to anyone out there these days with kids or a job, but we hold these truths to be self-evident: eating supper holds your body together, but eating supper together keeps your soul intact.

This week, knowing we were going to a concert at 4:00 that Sophia was playing in, Ben and I split our cooking into two parts. We used leftover Easter ham to make ham croquettes, and to offset their decadence, we made tuna poke bowls. These dishes have exactly no overlap in origin, but they worked well together!

This time, our poke bowls included rice, edamame, seaweed salad, marinated tuna, cucumbers, green onions, sesame seeds, and “Big Bang” sauce.

Before the concert, we worked on the croquettes and made rice to chill.

For the croquette recipe, look here:

Tapas Tuesday!
When we got home, we marinated the tuna and got our veggie mix-ins in order. Phil, my editor, insists that we identify our source of affordable, sushi-grade tuna. Aldi’s. Happy, Phil? No? Not until I tell people that it is half the cost at Aldi’s than it is anywhere else?
Making the bowls was easy, but Ben was fixated on producing not one, but two mayonnaise-based sauces. For the croquettes, we made a simplified aioli, which Ben doesn’t even try to say. He calls it, “the sauce” in a low, gravelly voice that lets you know it is imperative. For the poke bowls, we made what he calls Big Bang sauce (most call it bang bang sauce, but I like the cosmic nature of his label better, so we go with it.)
While the composed poke bowls chilled in the fridge a few minutes, we fried the croquettes.

The weather was warm, so we ate on the front porch. Sure, it was 8:00 before we actually ate, but we ate together. All together. Sophia joined us, and I’m sorry I didn’t think to get a picture of our family’s meal, but not actually all that sorry. Taking a picture is easy. Holding body and soul together? That’s the trick. There’s no place like home.