Welcome to Cooking Stuff. I’m Marcella. This is a place where I talk about all things food, cooking, and life. Recipes are back! Hit that button below to upgrade to a paid subscription so you don’t miss any.
Hi on a Saturday! Today was supposed to be my first BACKYARD dinner and right now I would have been ferociously cooking. Tuesday I took our cat, Chaz, to the vet. We had travel abroad coming up and he has had a handful of health issues this year. Something in my gut told me he wasn’t 100% and it would be a good idea to have him looked at before leaving him for two weeks. Our vet diagnosed him with a peritoneal-pericardial diaphragmatic hernia. Meaning a hole in his diaphragm allowing his organs to travel into his chest. Most likely a birth defect that would require surgery. Pretty much immediately after being told “I would postpone your trip and get him into surgery as soon as possible because I would hate for him to die” our trip was canceled and a surgery consult was scheduled.
The next morning he was having coughing fits and our vet said to head to ER for surgery. He and the doctors at the specialty hospital thought his organs were pressing against his lungs making it hard to breathe. To everyone’s surprise, his organs there right where they were supposed to be and there was no hernia, instead an enormous mass growing in his chest.
This has been a week. We are still waiting on the biopsy results and we will go from there. For now, our guest bathroom has been turned into a recovery room, I’m a 24/7 nurse, and Chaz is wearing a body suit and a pineapple around his head.
Last week’s newsletter included a poll asking which recipe from my BACKYARD dinner you wanted to receive. If you look now, strawberry galette has won but at the time I typed the recipe up Saffron Rice and Carrots was in the lead. I find it kind of funny because this is the carrots and cous cous recipe I was working on! Sometimes when a recipe just isn’t doing it for me, I put it to the side completely and revisit it at a later date. Well, I did that with this recipe but didn’t revisit it to send you. I transformed it into a rice dish to serve at my dinner.
This recipe consists of a very flavorful pot of basmati rice topped with grilled carrots and lots of herbs. If you don’t have a grill you can roast the carrots. I included both in the recipe.
Forgive me for keeping things short this week, being tardy, and the mediocre photo of this dish. Life is life-ing hard right now but I can promise one thing, this recipe will taste amazing. Enjoy!