"Clean House"

Tonight was a night to clean house or "clean fridge" in a manner of speaking before we hit the road for Memorial Day weekend. We pretty much tried to eat all of our fresh veggies and anything that might spoil while we are away for the long weekend. We also didn't want to end up with any leftovers in the fridge. The result? A potluck of fresh salad, grilled butternut squash and my favorite, Johnny Wontons served with store bought dumpling sauce.

Johnny Wontons are a Johnnycakes delicacy, or at least we like to think so. They are also a Couple of Cooks classic dish. We have quite a few "classic" Couple of Cooks original recipes in our arsenal that we have developed over the years. I won't describe how we prepared them tonight because (here is the best part!) we prepared them last month and froze them for a quick and delicious dinner in the future. They definitely fit the bill tonight. The next time we make them, I will detail their preparation but I will provide a quick description. Johnnycakes, with any help he can get from myself or our neighbor, assembles the dumplings or wontons using premade wonton wrappers and a ground pork mixture of scallions, ginger, garlic and sesame oil. We usually steam or fry them in sesame oil, though tonight Johnnycakes was feeling "grill happy" and cooked them in foil on the grill along side the butternut squash. It can be a rather lengthy process which is why we make a lot and freeze them. That way all we have to do is pull them out of the freezer and cook them up. Tonight was the third and final dinner from the most recent batch. While they might not be convenient on the front end, the Johnny Wontons pay dividends in later weeks which is why they fit our basic criteria that a meal must be... healthy, convenient and economical.

As I mentioned above, Johnnycakes and I are hitting the road for Memorial Day Weekend. We are headed to Ocean City, MD and plan to hit all our favorite pizza joints, boardwalk favorites and drink some damn good margaritas along the way. We'll be sure to detail all of our eating adventures.