It’s a quick weekend trip for the Grill-Meister and me, celebrating our tenth anniversary.
On a short walk yesterday afternoon, I looked up and saw these steeples framed by the traditional NOLA architectural elements of this stately home and a beautiful old oak tree. All of them both have withstood so much for so long.
It felt great to be in the moment, take the picture, have time to think about these iconic symbols, and then walk on.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
the window invites
me to ponder, don my shoes,
and prowl the city
© 2018 Glover Gardens
The Grill-Meister is a great Dad to his son and Bonus Dad to mine.
While Dad was alive, he and the Grill-Meister “got on like a house afire.”
He takes great care of his elderly parents.
He’s fun, thoughtful and resourceful. And great at grilling!
Happy Father’s Day, Grill-Meister! We all love you.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
I’m reblogging this post from Father’s Day last year with a haiku for my Dad. He loved it, and died 3 days later.
I miss him, on this first Father’s Day without him.
But I am perfectly at peace knowing that he knew how much I loved him.
A simple little Father’s Day haiku from a grateful daughter.
via Haiku for My Dad — Glover Gardens
As the weather gets hotter, we do more and more grilling here at Glover Gardens. I’m really happy with the on-the-grill recipe I’m sharing with you today, a citrusy and piquant take on the ever-moist chicken thigh. It’s the product of a decades-long subscription to Bon Appétit. That venerable magazine and I have been friends for a long, long time.
In August of 2007, the Tequila-Glazed Chicken with Jalapeño recipe caught my fancy. I made it for years, adjusting this and that, playing with the spices, making it hotter, making it mine. Yum!
Then Bon Appétit’s 2013 recipe for Citrus-Marinated Chicken Thighs came out, looking like it was from another page of the same playbook. Of course it was also delicious.
The methods were different, though. The first recipe benefits from a dry rub for a few hours and then gets a glaze on the grill, and the second soaks in an “aggressively seasoned” marinade before being broiled.
But I wanted it all – the seasonings, the marinade, and the glaze. The best of both. So I played around with the ingredients and the concepts, and here’s the result. I think you’ll like it. There’s a long list of ingredients, but this is a really easy recipe.
Oh, and since the grill is already hot, sometimes I like to go one step further and throw on some pineapple and peppers for an easy side dish. I’ve included the instructions for that, too.
Serves 6-8
Optional garnishes: cilantro, sliced jalapeños, sliced green onions
Combine the cilantro, garlic and serrano pepper in a food processor and process until they are finely ground. Add the cumin, nutmeg, red pepper flakes and sea salt and pulse again until combined. Pour in the juice, tequila and olive oil and mix again until blended.
Reserve and refrigerate 1 cup of the marinade, which will be used for the glaze later, or 1 1/2 cups if you’re planning to make the grilled pineapple and peppers side dish. Split the chicken thighs between two large food-safe resealable bags and distribute the remaining marinade on the chicken. Squeeze the air out of the bags and seal them, turning to ensure that the marinade covers all of the chicken pieces. Place in the refrigerator and marinate for 2-6 hours, turning the bags at least once.
Prepare the glaze by combining the honey and cayenne with 1 cup of the reserved marinade mixture in a small nonstick saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir and lower the heat to medium-high, keeping the glaze at a simmer until it thickens (about 5-7 minutes).
Remove the chicken from the marinade and place in a dish or cookie sheet. Preheat the grill to medium-high. Place the chicken on the grill and cook for about ten minutes, then turn and brush with the glaze on the cooked side. Turn again and add glaze to the first side. Continue grilling until the chicken is done to your liking, about 165° in the thickest part. Remove to a clean platter and either spoon on the reserved glaze, or serve it separately. Throw on the optional garnishes and serve.
When you’re ready to grill the chicken, arrange the pineapple and peppers in a pie plate and drizzle with the marinade. Grill them after you cook the chicken until you have a nice char on each side. Serve with the chicken.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
The summer months bring a welcome flurry of sound to Glover Gardens. Our Musical Millennial is home from the University of Texas where he’s studying Jazz Composition, and is busy writing, playing, recording and mixing new tunes. Other young musicians who are home for the summer drop in late at night and carry their instruments upstairs to the cluttered lair where the keyboards, amps and computers wait to come alive.
I love it.
Music, laughter and earnest debate about how to ramp up and tweak their collaborative creations drift downstairs to the Grill-Meister and me, and I know that all is right with the world.
Here’s the newest offering, Familiar Territory. It was written by another musical millennial, one of my son’s frequent recording and playing partners. It’s posted in my son’s Bandcamp site where you can download it for just $1 or stream it for free. (I have a bet with him about how many purchases this post might stimulate from loyal Glover Gardens followers, but hey, no pressure!)
It’s a fun tune to listen to, and was obviously fun to record.
Watch this space! These two are planning to write and record enough new material for an album before heading back to their respective colleges. And there’s an upcoming gig at Cezanne in Houston on July 14, for any of you locals that want to hear them live.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
(cover photo © Mallory Frenza)
I didn’t know you, Anthony Bourdain.
But you made a difference to me.
Your book, Kitchen Confidential, made me laugh out loud. Its relentless and brutal honesty also gave me complete certainty that I made the right choice by not going into the business of food and letting cooking for others remain a beloved hobby.
Your curiosity and wanderlust were inspiring. The world is a big, wonderful and fabulously interesting place, and your intense hunger for knowledge and new experiences tantalized and nourished me, along with so many others.
The headlong-headstrong way you embraced – and even exalted – peasant and street food helped me to embrace and exalt some of the more humble food in my own family’s background.
I didn’t know you, Anthony Bourdain.
But I’ve struggled with your death.
I’ve been silent for a few days trying to process it.
My brother made the same choice you did, Anthony. He took his own life.
I’ve been silent – and not-silent – for almost five years trying to process it.
There’s an army of people out there just like me who are struggling with your death from a duality of emotions.
There’s the sense of loss from the abrupt ending of your huge contribution to the canons of travel, food and cultural understanding, and a reluctant but absolutely unavoidable comparison to our own unwelcome experiences with the savage, raw, rollercoaster aftermath of suicide.
We mourn you with already-broken hearts, Anthony. There’s a seat at the table that shouldn’t be empty yet.
We cringe and weep for your loved ones, who will struggle for years to understand.
We wish it was different. We know it will never be the same.
I didn’t know you, Anthony Bourdain.
I wish I had.
You made a difference to me. To many.
Today I join the chorus of voices, each mourning your death and celebrating your life in their own way.
Your egalitarian outlook, voracious appetite and adventurous spirit made the world’s menu so much bigger for so many.
Thank you for that, Anthony. I hope you’ve found peace. I hope my brother has found peace. I pray that your family and loved ones will someday find peace and acceptance.
It takes a long, long time.
And for anyone else out there who has read this far and struggles with depression and hopelessness like Anthony, my brother, and so many others, below is a repeat of a ragged little poem I wrote, a plea for you to reach out. The original post is here: My Brother’s Suicide: Out of the Darkness and Into the Light.
please hear my plea
if you are out there somewhere
in the dark
considering taking control of your life
by taking your life
please tell someone
just one person
let one person know
that you are at risk
in the dark
and sad
and feeling alone and desperate and unloved
please hear my plea
know that the people who have always loved you
still do
always will
know that your current situation
in the dark
doesn’t have to be
your permanent situation
there’s no death sentence for mistakes or regret
unless you pass it on yourself
please hear my plea
reach out to the light
please tell someone
just one person
let one person know
that you are at risk
in the dark
and sad
and feeling alone and desperate and unloved
you’ll never know
unless you reach out
that you can live in the light again
we’ll never know we can help
unless you tell someone
just one person
let one person know
we’ll never know
that we could have been
the light in your darkness
please hear my plea:
you matter to someone
he mattered to me
excitement and dread ~
my two constant companions
on overseas flights
Sitting in my window seat in Premium Economy (no irony in that term!), I’m excited to be headed back to Paris but feeling a bit loathsome about the weather. Half of the passengers are on the plane and the rest are waiting at the gate here at Dulles International Airport, because lightning strikes have halted the boarding process. Sheesh!
I love air travel ~
but it’s the being there part,
not the getting there
Once the getting there is done, I promise you lots of peppy Paris posts with pics! ‘Til then, please send good air travel juju, and check out these other Paris-based posts (if you just can’t wait): click here.
I always write haiku when I’m waiting in line or stressed – you should try it! I call it Haiku Therapy. It passes the time and reduces the dread, and has gotten me into a lot of great conversations with “all y’all” haiku lovers out there.
A week later, after a successful (and super-busy!) trip, I’m just now seeing some of the comments and realizing that this post had a cliff-hanger ending with no resolution. Sorry about that! And thanks for the good juju…
The overnight flight was fine after a rocky start and we arrived in Paris in one of the most beautiful sunny days ever. And since the only way to conquer the jet lag and get onto local time quickly is to power through it and walk, walk, walk, that’s exactly what we did. To close out this tale, here’s a photo of the Eiffel Tower from the gardens in front of the Musée de l’Armée, where Napoleon is buried.
More to come.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
ramshackle tractors
llamas waiting for … something
barnyard still life
Thanks for reading! And if you just gotta have more nature haiku from Glover Gardens, click here.
© 2018 Glover Gardens
pliers were required
to open a juice bottle –
is this my future????
© 2018 Glover Gardens
