I’m using this title in jest since I’ve already written in a previous post about our family’s avoidance of certain words in the names of restaurants. But in this case, I’m Mom and John’s the Cap’n and the kitchen is our kitchen here in Marco Island. Last night we made an excellent meal. We started by visiting the local fish market, Paradise Fish Co.,and followed that with a trip to Publix for those tiny green beans that you can also find at Trader Joe’s. We grilled the escolar (quite a yummy fish) with some olive oil, lemon and salt, cooked the green beans ala Jacques Pepin (a little water and butter and by the time the water has evaporated the beans are cooked and are then sauteing in the butter), and enhanced some rice with chicken stock, a bay leaf, sauteed onions and garlic and lemon zest. We opened a nice bottle of white wine and, voila, a great dinner which cost about $25 to make and would have cost at least three times as much in a restaurant. Plus we could eat it next to the pool in our bathing suits! Sometimes I wonder why eating out seems so appealing.