A Night at Home with the Reesecups... and a present to myself.

After a week of constant activity, Jina and I got a chance to spend the night in. Of course, being the busy body I am, I couldn't stand for JUST cooking dinner.

So, placed a call (or series of calls) to our good friends Andrew and Jenny Reese and invited them for dinner. A great night of food, wine, and conversation was soon to follow.

Stopped at HEB and picked up a couple of things for dinner and headed home for some prep work. Chopping and dicing, and chiffonade, and saucing followed.

I decided to make a wild mushroom risotto and seared yellowfin tuna.

Got home, chopped the garlic, shallots, crimini and shitake mushrooms. Prepped the chicken stock and vegatable broth with a little fresh basil from the garden. Rubbed the tuna with salt, pepper, and EVOO.

Blender time. Juice of two fresh limes, some local honey, and a jalepeno from my garden (about the only one I could harvest) and a light sauce is ready.

About 15 minutes before Andy and Jenny arrive, start the risotto. Won't take long on the tuna or the wilted radicchio. The risotto, done properly, would take approximately forty minutes.

In the meantime, Andy and Jenny arrived, bearing a nice gift for Jina.

We chatted as the risotto finished, I seared off the tuna, and wilted down the radicchio. Le the tuna rest a few minutes, sliced and plated. Topped with the basil chiffonade and some chopped parsley and oregano (also from my herb garden.)

More great conversation over a few glasses of wine.

After dinner, we settle down for a little Maui picture slide show. Pretty nice to throw the pics up on the 42" TV thanks to the HDMI port on my laptop.

On to the present to myself. Got up Saturday morning, went for a run. No, that's not the present but felt good. A good workout. Came home, picked up Jina, took Rocky over to Central Texas Animal Hospital for his rattlesnake vaccine booster... then shopping time.

Academy, Sam's, Lowe's... checking out gas grills. Can you believe I don't have one here? This will be resolved this weekend. One more stop at Home Depot tomorrow, but have my eye on one at Lowe's.

Now for the fun. Got a little $50 gift card at Best Buy... It was suggested by my friend Dustin that if I was going to take photos of my food, I needed a better camera. Did a little research, decided on a Nikon D3100 Digital SLR Camera with Nikon AF-S DX 18-55mm and 55-200mm VR lenses. Time to learn more about D-SLR... more to come.