What's cooking

Amelia and John wanted to play restaurant tonight after dinner. This is a game where they are the owners of a restaurant, I am the customer, and they take turns pretending to serve me whatever food they are creating. I was impressed that tonight they had created a hand-written menu to accompany this game. The menu for the "Wild Ones Diner" is below. I am guessing the theme of the restaurant came from the selection of Yellowstone-inspired stickers (gifts from their grandparents who spend the summers in Jackson Hole) available in Amelia's sticker box.Entrees: Frog legs, wild pig steak, grilled snails, and Gorilla fruit salad (the healthiest choice, they told me). Sides: Snake chips, Raven rice, Zebra fries. Beverages: Milk, Shirley Temple (no idea they knew what that even was), Fruit Punch, Fountain drinks, lemonade, and water. From this list I selected the grilled snails, raven rice and fruit punch. The kid's menu selections included: Monkey mac & cheese, shark chicken fingers, spider spaghetti, shrimp, and crab corn dogs. I was told I could order from the children's menu, but the grilled snail sounded too good to pass up. From the dessert choices above I ordered the big-bear tres leches. When I asked what made the tres leches like a bear, The answer I got was that the cake was normal tres leches but the bear name was just part of the theme ("Don't you get it, mom?"). Cute. And if you were wondering what the vegetable of the day was? Sweet white corn.

The kids laughed and had a great time taking my order and serving the (pretend) food. They like it when I play the part of the cranky customer, so I am sure to complain about the food not being served hot, needing attention from the waitress, and not getting my meal timely enough. It's funny to see which features of restaurants they incorporate in their play too. For example, my silverware came to the table rolled in a paper towel, similar to the presentation at restaurants in a cloth napkin.

On another note, the real food meal of the weekend at the Wilson household was Vietnamese Pork from the latest issue of Cooking Light magazine. Scott and I enjoyed this dish on Saturday night, and we thought it was truly outstanding. The whole creation was unlike nothing we had made before and we would prepare this meal again in a heartbeat.

The photo below is the stock picture from the magazine's website, and beneath that is a picture I took of the many condiment bowls on our kitchen table prior to serving.

The recipe is available on the magazine's website so I won't type it here. But for a quick summary: sliced pork tenderloin is marinated in a mixture of sugar, garlic, onion, ginger, lemongrass, soy sauce, fish sauce and vegetable oil. After marinating for several hours the pork is threaded onto skwers and grilled, then served with an array of toppings all together on large bibb lettuce leaves. The condiments were shredded carrots (soaked in vinegar, sugar and lemon juice, which gives the carrots a pickled flavor), thinly sliced chiles (I used serrano and habanero), thin cooked rice noodles, cilantro, basil, sliced cucumber and roasted peanuts. The flavors of the pork were different and strong and I loved the mixture of unique toppings that I wouldn't usually pull together.