Another Glorious Food Leftovers Piece

Ah, so this is going to be another food blog? Another leftover food blog? Why does this guy keep writing stuff like this? Can't he stick to politics or ayahuasca or even his family? How are his damned dogs anyway?
    Thanks for asking. The dogs are find. Boots got joined by Blackie a couple of months ago. He came, he stayed, we fed him. Now a younger version of Blackie has come along--so alike that I think she may be Blackie's daughter--out of nowhere and appears likely to stay awhile as well. So now I have to cook a lot of chicken legs daily.
   But those are not the leftovers here. What happened was a friend came in Thursday for several days. From Arizona, I think. Then another friend flew in on Friday from New York, just about the time that Madeleina got home from college for the weekend.
   Not sure what people would want considering the hour, I made a batch of good taco ground beef--yeah, I'm making a lot of that lately to make up for all the years I never did--and got a good head of organic iceberg lettuce, a nice avocado, some shredded cheddar, taco sauce, and hard taco shells. That would cover me if Chepa and the girls came over, if Italo came over, or Marco, or whomever. To go with that, I made a spaghetti squash. Baked it with a bit of butter, and when it was done put it in a saute pan that had lots of garlic and diced red pepper in it, added a bit more butter and voila!
   Then I made a large pan of Uncle Clem's Chicken--Madeleina's favorite treat. You take chicken breasts, cut them into smallish--siingle bite--pieces, flour them and sear them in olive oil with a bit of garlic, good cracked black pepper and pink sea salt. Then you get an absurd amount of broccoli and cut that into a couple of hundred bite-sized florets. You steam or par boil those. Then you put the broccoli on the bottom of a good baking pan, put the chicken on that, add the secret sauce to cover all, then top with sliced fresh mozzarella. Bake till the cheese is golden brown, serve over rice.
   Now on Saturday, the out of town friends were going to do medicine, and we were joined by a third friend, from Texas. They could only have one meal of the day, then had to fast (and do lots of yard work to get rid of the food in their systems) and it had to be fairly light, so I made them a large salmon filet. Stove top in olive oil, skin up, high heat, till the meat side was a beautiful dark brown. Flipped it so skin side was down, then put thin sliced zuccini, yellow squash, diced Roma tomatoes and chopped scallions all around the fish in the pan and let it cook away. It was a large piece of fish, good and thick, so that was probably 15 minutes. Then I took out the fish and put it aside. Added some organic vegetable stock to the veggies and pan juices, stirred em up, put them in a bowl. I put a bunch, big bunch, of spinach in the pan with what little pan juice was left until it wilted. Put the spinach as a bed on the plates, put a nice slice of salmon on that, put the veggies next to the salmon, with some of them just falling over the thin end of the meat, then put rice next to those. Good meal.
    No food for anyone for dinner that night, just ceremony.
    The next morning all were ravished, so I made home fries with onions, cooked up a mess of scrambled eggs with cheese, and fried some good ham slices for breakfast for them.
   But then, see, two more friends were coming over in the afternoon. What to make them? And what if Chepa and the kids came over? So I put eight chicken thighs in the oven after searing them stove, then tossed in three boneless beef ribs in a homemade barbeque sauce and got them baking. Put together a nice guacamole and then sliced a beautiful papaya and drenched it in fresh lime juice.
   We wound up using a little of everything and since the Giants were playing I didn't put anything away before the game ended and I went to sleep.
    So I woke up to a table filled with left overs: There was a small bowl of taco beef and a couple of taco shells and nearby some shredded cheddar. The guacamole sat near the plate of ribs, which was next to the remaining chicken thighs, and Uncle Clem's Chicken, and not far from the last of the spaghetti squash, which shared a plate with a bit of the home fries. Rice was on the stove; a plate with a tiny bit of salmon was still wrapped in the oven.
   The ice cream hadn't been touched. I guess the food was good. And I think the dogs are going to have a great mosh of a meal later!