Thoughts of a Middle Aged Man

My Dad use to say the difference between a regular meal and a gourmet meal is the gourmet meal has more butter. Gary, one of the Seamhead Tour members, was asked by his kids his favorite food, in anticipation of preparing his answer for his birthday meal. His answer was sauce, anything with sauce. Gary and my Dad were right. A sauce can make a plain chicken breast stunning, and those sauces are usually finished with some butter, to add shine, consistency and richness. With my new cooking pal, I am creating more sauces for even our simple weeknight meals. I have included two recent sauces on my recipe page. The first sauce I tried was the Bobby Flay inspired Orange Habanero Sauce. This sauce was so good . A nice balance of heat and sweetness that complimented the sauteed Tilapia that I served with some broccoli. It was a dinner for just Annette and I, but the easily made sauce transformed the simple meal to a gourmet delight.

The second sauce was inspired by Ivana, our Serbian house guest. She had bought some Cabernet and wanted to drink it before she left for New Zealand. So I bought some steaks and whipped up (more appropriately whisked up) the Mesa Grill Steak Sauce to serve with the steaks. Wow, this steak sauce had such a great flavor and drastically improved the taste of an already tasty dry aged steak. I am anxious to use the extra sauce for another meat based meal real soon.

So I am in the search mode for more and more sauces to make my simple food, gourmet. Of course I could simply add more butter.