After The Storm

Last Wednesday night we traveled to St. Louis to see the U.S. Men’s National Team in soccer play in the Concacaf Gold Cup tournament agains St. Kitts & Nevis. If you have not been to a game at the new St. Louis City Park, you really must go! It’s a great stadium and an even greater atmosphere. I’m still learning about soccer, and I love it!

We headed back to Springfield Thursday morning, ran some errands, and made it home minutes before the storm hit and the tornado sirens were going off, just after noon. I found out later that Central Illinois had been hit with both tornados and a derecho. We lost power around 12:20 p.m. – and so did practically everyone I know in Springfield and Chatham.

We had already planned on having our friends Nancy and Zach over for dinner that night, so we decided to go ahead and still do it, even without power.

Zach had gone to the Farmer’s Market on Wednesday and got all of the vegetables for a great salad. Nancy made a dressing using Katz Sauvignon Blanc Vinegar. It was so good, I’m going to order some!

I had gone to Robert’s Seafood Market for shrimp the day before, so I really needed to cook them. I made Bobby Flay’s Perfectly Grilled Shrimp with Lemon Basil Dipping Sauce. This recipe came from one of my favorite cookbooks, “Bobby Flay’s Grill It!”. A word of caution about the recipe – DO NOT USE THAT MUCH SALT. I have made these shrimp many times over the years, and I use half that amount or less. You will be really sorry if you use the entire amount listed in the recipe – trust me. That being said, it is and has been one of my favorite ways of fixing shrimp.

Bobby Flay’s Lemon Basil Dipping sauce is so good and easy too!

You will notice the recipe calls for a food processor to combine the ingredients … not going to happen when the electricity is out! Lucky for me I purchased this handy dandy Manual Food Processor from Pampered Chef … it worked great!

I had also purchased some sirloin steaks while at Robert’s Seafood market, and decided to make a Chimichurri Sauce by Emeril Lagasse to go with them since my herb garden is thriving right now. The Manual Food Processor was perfect for this recipe – and the sauce was delicious with the steak.

I was planning on roasting some potatoes in the oven – scratch that! Instead I cut the potatoes into chunks, tossed them with olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and fresh herbs; put them in an aluminum foil packet, and grilled on one side for 25 minutes, flipped and grilled on the other side for 25 minutes. I kept the grill temperature between 350 degrees and 400 degrees. They came out nice and charred on the outside, and soft on the inside. Delicious! Even Nancy who does not like potatoes really liked them 🙂

Great wine, food, and conversation – it was a wonderful night and took away from some of the stress that people were starting to feel. Lucky for me and Mr. T, our power came on that night just after 10:00 p.m. Most of our friends were not so lucky.

The next day we offered up our house to our friends who needed a cup of coffee, air conditioning, to charge their electronics, or just to get away. Sue and Richard took us up on our offer, and even asked if they could cook some of their food that was going to go bad. Of course they could! Sue brought over a marinated pork roast and carrots, I had some extra potatoes, and stuff to make a quick salad. It was delicious and so much fun to get together – another night of great wine, food, and conversation!

The pork was super delicious, and since they did not have electricity at their house yet we got to keep the leftovers. Mr. T swore it made the best pork sandwich he has ever had 😉 Sue was nice enough to share the marinade recipe with me, so I am sharing with everyone!

As I am writing this, some of our friends still do not have power after four days. I know it could be worse, and we are all very lucky. We are also very fortunate to have our wine store family at It’s All About Wine – it has served not only as a place to get a great glass of wine, but also a place to meet up and check-in on our friends. Here’s to great friendship during trying times – cheers!