I know I haven't done much of this lately, sorry

I have been cooking.  I cook most days, in fact.  But I haven't had much joy in the cooking lately.  It's dinner.  It's a meal.  It's perfunctory.

In recent days, I've been messaging friends on Facebook.  Folks I haven't kept up with in a mighty long time, folks I thought it might be nice to say hello to and catch up with.  One of them responded (yay!), and in the response said that they missed my cooking photos.  I realized that no, I hadn't been posting many.  So here we are.

Van (and Olive, not pictured - she's had a lot of attention on here lately!) came over late afternoon for dinner here.  I didn't photograph the dessert either, a mango brown butter tart.  Tasty enough!  Conrad will take some of the leftovers to NOLA tomorrow.

But I did take photos of the dinner.  Now that we have some of the Russell Wright dishes from Vancouver, I decided to serve the meal in them.  Tomatillo braised country style pork ribs with rice cooked in black bead liquor. 

Not a bad meal at all!  I was pleased with it for a change.  A little more salt, perhaps?  But it was good.

On a side note, and as you all probably know, we like our cocktails.  The Last Word is our favourite, a concoction that relies on green chartreuse.  That spirit is hard to find (though I shan't confess to our stockpile).  And some people suggest substituting Genepy.  I've had that before, and we do have some on hand, but Van had never tried it.  So I made a Last Word with the Genepy, and that led to me having Conrad

and Van

do a comparison of the chartreuse and the Genepy.  That was interesting.  Genepy is lower ABV and easier to drink, but the chartreuse makes a better cocktail, we agreed.

It wasn't all Last Words, though.  I also had a Preakness to cap the evening.

And now Conrad will be heading out of town.  Darn it.  Time with Van ahead (yay!), but it will be good to have Conrad home.