Today.

Paul came up from DC last night. We had dinner at the Dukem Ethiopian restaurant that opened in my neighborhood within the last year. It's the second location of the restaurant of the same name in DC.

The restaurant is on the small side and every table was occupied, so we had our dinner at the bar. I have dined there before with xavier78, so I knew that the food would be good. Paul seemed very pleased with the meal.

After dinner, we wandered up to the Charles theatre, but there was nothing playing within the next hour and a half, so we returned to my apartment for the evening.

This morning, Paul left to catch his train back to DC and I pored through my cookbooks, looking for something new to try. I settled on a slow cooker recipe for a black-eyed pea and sausage soup. I hit the grocery store to pick up the ingredients, although I didn't find wheat berries. I decided that I'd go ahead without them.

Back home, I prepared the ingredients and plopped them in the slow cooker, noodled around on the computer for a while, and went back to bed for a couple of hours. Lunch was scrambled eggs and toast. Then I started cleaning my apartment and made significant progress, but it's really just the tip of the iceberg.

I called Jeffrey up to see what he was doing tonight. We've made plans for me to carry my soup over to his place. He said that he picked up some nice bread that will go well with the soup and he baked a pecan pie today with a homemade crust. We'll pick out a movie from the ones he has on hand and have a nice evening.

My mom's recipe for hash

When I was growing up, when we had pot roast for dinner you could be sure that we would be having hash for dinner the following night. This is one of my comfort foods, but one that I didn't know how to prepare until I recently called my mom for the recipe. I'm noting it here so I don't lose it.

First, cut the leftover pot roast into small chunks. Chop a large onion into large chunks (small pieces will just disappear as the hash cooks, according to my mom). Then heat up some oil in a frying pan and add flour to make a roux. Add salt and pepper. Cook the roux until it's golden brown, then add hot water to fill up the pan. Throw in the beef and the onion. Let this simmer for about thirty minutes so that it reduces to a nice gravy. Serve over rice.

It wasn't until I started looking for this recipe myself that I found that this is entirely unlike what the rest of the world calls "hash". That's okay — nobody makes potato salad like my mom, either. :-)