Cress-Topped Brown Rice with Steamed and Roasted Vegetables

I invited Tony for lunch today. I hate having to rush preparing lunch and he only has 40 minutes or so. He works nearby but has to rush back. I remember lunchtime when I worked at the clinic. Somehow one never quite gets off the work mode. We gulp down our food, without savoring the subtleties of the cuisine. Cooking for a guest does have the advantage of what architect Renzo Piano called "the pure force of necessity." Cooking for myself is like theorizing, cooking with a guest becomes the "real thing." No longer rehearsing, it's show time!

Indiana has exploded into its summer bounty. The herbs and vegetables on the deck are starting to make their appearance on the table. Before Tony arrived, I snipped some cress and Italian parsley from the deck herb garden and apple mint tips from the downstairs garden. I might buy my produce from Wal-Mart but the addition of freshly cut herbs makes a difference. Maybe it's in the eye of the beholder, the mind of the perceiver, but a trick I've learned through the years from preparing previously cooked food is to add something fresh to it to liven it up again. Food is energy and we partake of the energy even before we start the meal. The anticipation of eating is sometimes as good as the eating itself. The sight and aroma of the food in front of us are already energy transmitted if not to our stomachs, to the mind that is the reason we eat anyway. The body is simply vehicle for the soul, or the animating energy that is our life's source. We can't separate body from mind so maybe the division is foolish. The mind experiences what is outside itself through the body. Experience, of course, is the fundamental operation of energy in us; it is what makes each of us unique.

I heated roast chicken breast from yesterday and put together a mélange that met the challenge of the occasion. My fridge is always full of food, uncooked and cooked. I joke that I have a restaurant's refrigerator. A little of this, a little of that, can make a huge difference in a dish. The blanched snow peas and cauliflower and seasoned them with roast drippings. I pan-roasted slices of tomato and zucchini. I cooked brown rice with kombu knots, serving mounds of the rich, Japanese short-grain rice topped with the kelp and fresh herb cuttings. The result: something to make my mother proud!

Posted via email from Duende Joes