You're coming on Tuesday?/ Grilled swordfish on rice salad

 

Wait a minute.  You're coming Tuesday? You mean, instead of Wednesday? Both days? What the...? OK, I don't like my precious little schedule disrupted. As anyone who reads this blog knows, my Current Wife and I have this "arrangement" where, as I like to put it, we are married only four days a week. The three other days I don't shave, I can eat meat, watch as much baseball as I like,  stay up late, eat out of the pot and do other "single guy" things to my heart's content. Now, due to some (temporary) glitch in her work schedule, she's going to be around for the next 3 Tuesdays. What is this?

So I find out about this last Friday. Suddenly, I recalled all the conversations about how she has to cook for her sons on Tuesday. No, she can't on Monday because they need lunch for the week. (huh?) I can't even remember all the stuff she told me when we first were married and(she) decided on all this. That was before all my married friends (those in long term marriages especially) started telling me I should write a book on how to stay happily married. Oddly, I heard this mostly from the women. Anyhow, I've learned what a nice deal it is and have come around to really appreciating our weekly "marriage breaks". Now this! Oh well, I decided to be gracious about it and serve the left over lasagne (which I would have eaten myself) on Wednesday. I looked in my freezer and found two smallish sword fish steaks. I still had a couple of tomatoes and some corn from the Farmer's Market and some avocado from Trader Joe. Easy, I'll make rice salad with guacamole, corn, tomatoes and what's that in the back of the 'fridge? Artichoke hearts. So, in this order, I 1., Marinated the swordfish in lime zest, olive oil and a little salt and pepper; 2.,  I made a dressing of lime juice, cumin, cilantro and olive oil;

3., Boiled the (abborio) rice in a pot of salted water; 4., Made guacamole with two avocados mashed, one clove of chopped garlic, cilantro, red onion and diced tomato; 5., I cooked the corn, fished out the artichoke hearts and sliced another tomato. After the rice cooled, I combined all but the guacamole, and when my "Tuesday wife" appeared, grilled the swordfish steaks and arranged them over the cooled rice salad with the guacamole on the side.BTW, you don't add the salad dressing till the last moment. You know, I could get used to 5 days a week!