Say… I like green eggs and ham!  I do!  I like them, Sam-I-Am!

Okay, it’s not Green Eggs and Ham.  But when I made this dinner, that’s all I could think about.  Everything was green!

This is just to show you that my cooking extends beyond baking cookies. 

Really.  I don’t spend all my time making cookies, so don’t worry about my glycemic intake too much.  Sweets are a really fun and fast way to experiment and I like them and they’re easy to photograph, and people like me when I give them treats, but really… I like to cook everything.

(Except beets.)

This lovely dish  begins with spinach linguini (very easy to make by hand if you like) and is tossed with basil and asparagus.  That makes three very green things with some scallops on the side.   See what I mean about green eggs and ham?  But it was a perfect recipe for our Texas heat.  Very lightly butter-glazed and vegetable-summery…  And there’s a recipe.  Sigh.  But I am so tired and lazy that I have not done a real version yet.  Here’s the bare details:

Ingredients:  1 bunch asparagus, 8 oz spinach linguini, 1 lb. scallops, pinch ground pepper, 2 tsp. butter, 2 Tbsp. lemon juice (half a fair-sized lemon), 1/4 c. water and 1/4 c. fresh basil.

Simple:  Slice asparagus diagonally 2 inches, boil to tender-crisp.  Add pasta to used asparagus water, cook al dente.  Season scallops with pepper to taste.  Cook scallops in butter until opaque on both sides, remove.  Add lemon juice and water to skillet, cook until reduced about 1 minute.  Drain pasta and toss with asparagus, lemon juice, and basil.  Serve with scallops.

Full Directions (or I’ve-Never-Cooked-With-These-Things-Before):   Discard the woody part of the aparagus stem (just snap near the bottom and wherever it breaks off easily, discard that part).  Wash and slice the asparagus spears into 2-inch diagonal chunks and set aside. 

Wash and dry the basil leaves, ripping them off the stems and discarding the stems.  Pile the little leaves on the big leaves, roll them up into a little cigarette, and then slice thinly (this is a great way to julienne herbs, especially basil).  ((With a NON-serrated knife.  Plain blade, ladies. ))

Boil the asparagus in a large pot (don’t add the asparagus until the water’s boiling.  Don’t add salt to your water) for about 1 minute until they get bright green and slightly tender-crisp.  Remove with a slotted spoon to a colander, rinse with cool water, and set aside.  DON’T DUMP THE WATER!

Add the spinach linguini to the boiling asparagus water pot and cook until done (al dente – to the tooth).  Sprinkle a very light amount of pepper (very light) on the scallops.  Throw the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and let it melt.  Cook the scallops in the butter for five minutes, then the other side.  If you have jumbo scallops like me, it might take a little longer.  They will become opaque when done.

While the scallops are cooking, put your water in a glass measuring cup and squeeze the fresh lemon in. (Lemon tip: press the lemon with the palm of your hand against the counter and roll it around to loosen up the juices inside before you cut it open.  You can also take a citrus zester and get some lovely lemon shavings to put in a ziplock baggie in the freezer for later.  Now cut open the lemon, squeeze out the juice, squeeze any leftovers in a ice-cube tray and put it in the freezer.  when they get hard, put the lemon cube in a ziplock bag and save for when you don’t have fresh lemons.  One cube equals about one Tbsp. fresh juice.)  

When the scallops are opaque on both sides, take them out of the skillet.  Put the lemon water in.  Let it boil until it reduces slightly – about 1 minute. 

Drain the pasta from the other pot, throw in the asparagus, the julienned basil, and the lemon juice mixture from your skillet.  Toss gently.  Serve with scallops on top.  Or top with asparagus spears, like I did, and put scallops on the side.

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Okay, really, the deal with nice recipe cards is that I need to set up pages for each category so I can create a recipe index, but… I’m just learning all this Wordpress developer stuff and I stink at it. 

That and I spend all my free time at night scanning dusty genealogy to create interactive and useful files for relatives who loudly demand my grandmother’s handwritten notes.  It’s useful.  It is.  It’s just… exhausting trying to figure out which parts are useful and how to make it simple/easy/insanely user-friendly to navigate and understand.

And I’m finishing the layout for a blog-to-blurb book.  Has anyone tried to do this before?  Don’t you just HATE how Blurb changes your software on you and then it won’t open previous files?  This book has taken me two years because of that.  ack.  But it’s a great system for slurping comments.  I just downloaded Adobe InDesign’s 30-day trial because I like the idea of having page-turn swf files, but I’m pretty sure there’s no way I can get 5,000 pages worth of genealogy turned into digital media in um, 21 days now.

So if any of you have connections and want to donate a program for review, hook me up – all things Adobe are in high demand over here.  (But I do have Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom, thank you, Phil!  I love you!)