Talent

For the most part, I don't think about myself as someone who has much talent of any kind (in my chosen field or in any other).  Once upon a time, this attitude was a product of true self-loathing but nowadays it's usually born of the awareness of the truly talented people I know - I know amazingly talented people, and enjoy the talent of lots of people I don't know.  Once you've met and experienced real talent, it's impossible to call your own feeble motions anything grand or successful. Even when my sweet husband says "You're amazing" to me, I tend to shrug it off, because I'm well aware I am pretty ordinary.

But.

I actually do have a talent, one I forget about until exactly the right combination of factors comes together.  I can take a handful of leftover ingredients, mix it with a few staples, and without using a recipe, I can make tremendously tasty meals.  Outrageously tasty.  The one downside is that they can only rarely be duplicated, because their creation is utterly spontaneous.

Of course I want to lead up to what I made tonight.  It was spectacular.  Let's leave aside the fact that I made homemade strawberry ice cream, because I did use a recipe for that and I made it because I got an entire flat of strawberries (8 lbs) for $0.49.  That's a ton of strawberries.  I may have to make pancakes in the morning to make this worth my while.

BUT that isn't what I made. I had a bag of grainy/orzoy/couscousy mixed goodness (trader joe's - it's really tasty no matter what you dump in with it), cooked that up (using chicken stock, thank you very much), roasted grape tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and tofu slices in a lemon juice/olive oil marinade I just made up, tossed that all in with the mixed grains and some feta cheese, drizzled the whole thing with more lemon juice, and....it was excellent.  I was impressed in spite of myself.

It doesn't hurt that the strawberry ice cream also turned out so creamy and delicious.  Y'all - I'm not a food genius, but give me a handful of ingredients that go together and a half of an idea and you will get a great dinner out of it.  It only really works when my back is against the wall and I have to combine foodstuffs before they go bad and have to be tossed out.  But when it works, it really works.

Come for dinner sometime - you'll see.