Last week, Amanda posted a photo of their supper spread — gado gado it was called: a variety of steamed vegetables over rice and topped with a peanut sauce — and it looked so utterly fantastic that that very afternoon I swung by the grocery store for the sole purpose of acquiring the proper ingredients: purple cabbage, cucumbers, cauliflower, and cilantro.

The meal was simple to make — pop rice in the cooker, make a sauce, and prep and steam the veggies — our supper plates that night were spectacularly colorful, the meal so wonderfully light. After all the winter fare, it was just the thing.

And the rest of the family liked it well enough, but…

“It’d be better with chicken,” my older son said.

“Grilled chicken,” my husband said.

So when we ate it again for lunch the next day, this time it came with a piece of grilled chicken on top.

And they were right — it was better.

Gado Gado
Adapted from Extending The Table.

Gado gado is basically just a salad, but with the veggies steamed instead of raw. I prepped all the vegetables at once and then steamed them, one vegetable after the other, only taking about two minutes for each batch — when done, they should be still a bit crunchy. Once steamed, the veggies can sit at room temp for a couple hours, or store in the fridge until ready to use.

I though the peanut sauce a little flat, flavor-wise, and have since done a little research and determined that one tablespoon of fish sauce may do the the trick.

steamed vegetables: 
Cauliflower, broken into florets
Carrots, sliced into matchsticks
Purple cabbage, chopped fine
Zucchini, halved lengthwise and then sliced into moons
Other options: green beans, green cabbage, broccoli, sweet potato, etc.

raw vegetables: 
Radishes, thinly sliced
Cucumbers, chopped
Cilantro, rough chop
Bean sprouts

other components:
Brown rice
Boiled eggs
Grilled chicken, optional (and probably not authentic)
Peanuts, chopped, for garnish
Peanut sauce (recipe follows)

Peanut Sauce
3 tablespoons peanut oil
½ onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced
1 heaping cup peanut butter
½ teaspoon (or more!) red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
3½ cups coconut milk or water (or a combination of the two)
1 lemon (or lime), zest and juice
1 teaspoon each soy sauce and brown sugar
Plenty of salt (start with 1 teaspoon)

Saute the onion and garlic in the peanut oil until tender and translucent. Add the fresh ginger and cook for another minute. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 15 minutes.

To serve:
Put rice on the place and then pile on the vegetables. Add the boiled egg and chicken, top with lots of peanut sauce (treat it like a gravy), and sprinkle with nuts.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (4.11.16), right now, when popcorn won’t pop, Mr. Tiny, an evening walk, mint wedding cake.

Wednesday evening, Alice, my younger daughter’s dog, was hit and killed.

The man who called to alert us said he found her body in the road about a mile from our house. He pulled her to the side of the road. She was still warm, he said.

The children had just gone to bed. We told them the news. My husband and older son retrieved the body. Alice looked just like herself, her body unmarred. Ruffled by the blustery night air, her soft fur smelled fresh and clean.

My husband and son dug a deep hole by the back deck. My daughter removed her collar and dog tag. We wrapped her in an old pink blanket. The girls shoveled in the dirt.

“We can plant a special bush,” I said.

“Or a red fern,” my older daughter said.

On my younger daughter’s birthday, less than two months ago, she wanted to recreate the last year’s birthday, the moment when we’d surprised her with Alice. She changed into the same skirt she’d been wearing that day, and my husband delivered Alice — this time big and squirmy — into her lap while I took pictures.

They turned out just as blurry as the first time.

My husband often teased me about my affection for Alice — You’ve totally fallen for that dog, Jennifer — and I’d roll my eyes, but it was true. I’ve always liked our animals — been fond of them even — but I’ve never liked any of them as much as Alice. She was so alert, so curious and playful. She was expressive, and smart. And she loved to run.

All our dogs have roamed on occasion — slipping through a left-open gate or a hole in the fence — so it took as a little while to catch on that this was different. Alice wasn’t just sniffing around the neighboring fields, she was running, perhaps for miles. Charlotte would run with her, but being so little, she struggled to keep up and came back footsore.

So we buckled down. We borrowed an electric shock collar. We kept the dogs in the kennel, or tied. When they were loose in the yard, we’d watch them. But even so, they still managed to get away every now and then.

That’s what happened last week. She made off when no one was looking.

Four hours later, the call.

None of us slept well that night. The next day I canceled everything and stayed home with the children. I gave the girls regular chores. I made granola bars. My daughter put daffodils on the grave. We cried a lot.

I suggested to the girls that we go run some errands, to get out of the house. My older daughter didn’t have the energy to join us, so just my younger daughter and I went. We stopped at Target to return a shirt we’d gotten her for her birthday and to pick out something else, but she only tried on one shirt before quitting. Her heart wasn’t in it.

That evening my father stopped by with a bouquet of flowers for my daughter.

My sister-in-law texted that they’d be bringing us dessert that evening, and after supper my brother stopped in with a pie — strawberry rhubarb, made by my ten-year-old niece — along with a bouquet of wildflowers and a packet of homemade cards from the cousins.

The shock is wearing off now, but the grief still comes, unbidden, in waves. Even though we joke and laugh and fight, there’s an undercurrent of sadness. Eventually it won’t hurt so much, I tell the kids. It’s okay to cry. And so we do.

We miss Alice.

This same time, years previous: beginner’s bread, scatteredness, the quotidian (4.6.15), the quotidian (4.7.14), answers, yellow cake, cardamom orange buns, asparagus with lemon and butter.

A couple months ago while poking around the internet for Puerto Rican recipes (travel is inspiring!), I came across a recipe for a simple sweetened condensed milk cake. I made it once, just as the recipe said, dusting the top with powdered sugar and serving it with a lemon blueberry sauce (the recipe hadn’t said to do that, though) and whipped cream.

Since then, there have been a slew of variations:
*I’ve quadrupled the lime zest, and swapped out the lime juice for rum.
*I’ve poked holes all over the top of the baked cake and then doused it with a hot butter-and-rum sauce, spiked with lime.
*I’ve made it in layers, splitting each of the layers in half and filling with lemon curd. Then, between the two layers, a strawberry cream cheese filling (I think? There have been so many cakes, I’m having trouble remembering.) The sides and top I iced with a butter cream. That version went to our homeless shelter and was, I heard later, a smash hit, so…
*I made it again, this time icing it with some leftover cream cheese frosting, I think.
*Most recently, I’ve soaked the entire thing with the hot rum-lime sauce and then split it in half and filled with lemon curd and (leftover, curdled — what in the world?) creamy fluff frosting.

In other words, it’s high time I share the recipe!

Here, I’m giving the recipe to you straight. As written, it’s a deliciously simple yellow cake, less fluffy than some — I think it’s the condensed milk that gives it more heft — and with subtle hints of lime and nutmeg. From there, you can take it in any direction.

Caribbean Milk Cake
Adapted from Imma’s blog, Immaculate Bites.

The absence of salt is not a typo.

2½ sticks butter
¾ cup sugar
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
5 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon rum or lime juice
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1-2 teaspoons freshly ground nutmeg
4 tablespoons lime zest (about four limes)

Cream together the butter and sugar. Add the condensed milk and beat well. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and rum. Add the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, and zest and stir until combined.

Pour the batter into a greased ten-inch springform pan and bake at 325 degrees for 40-50 minutes. Cool completely before dusting with powdered sugar and serving with whipped cream and berries.

Variations:
*For a layer cake, divide batter between three, greased and lined, 8-inch pans.
*Split layers and fill with lemon or lime curd.
*Pour a hot butter-rum sauce over the baked cake…

Butter Rum Sauce
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup rum
½ teaspoon vanilla
¼ cup fresh lime juice, optional

Combine the butter, sugar, salt, and rum in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and gently boil the sauce for at least five minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla (and/or the lime juice).

Let the cake cool for ten minutes and then, using some sort of pokey thing, like the slender end of a chopstick, jab holes all over the cake, making sure to reach the bottom of the pan. Drizzle the sauce slowly over the cake, using a spoon or spatula to evenly distribute the sauce, if needed. Cool completely.

(Once when I was just dousing an 8-inch cake, I first flipped the cake out of the pan, poured some sauce into the bottom of the pan, and then returned the cake to the pan before poking the holes, effectively saturating the cake with flavor from both top and bottom.)

This same time, years previous: a trick for cooking pasta, the quotidian (4.4.16), cup cheese, chickpeas with spinach, spinach cheese crepes.