I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get stuck in a bit of a rut and make the same dishes over and over for a while. A little change or variety can be a positive aspect in one’s outlook. The other day, dealing with a friend’s recent blindness, it seemed like a great time to change things up a little bit.

SWAMI rates red wine a neutral for me. No other alcohol is rated even that high. I rarely take any wine as a libation but it is useful for flavor in a variety of prepared foods.

While there are a wide variety of cheeses that are beneficial or neutral on my SWAMI list the suggested quantity and frequency is, for lack of a better description, on the verge of non-existent. Okay – a better description would be minimal. It’s all a state of mind. To get the maximum value from the qualities of the cheese, I choose to use it almost exclusively for cooking.

The idea this time was to create some kind of sauce that differed from the usual red sauce which I sometimes use wine in, and a basic Alfredo type of white sauce that takes advantage of my available cheese. The whole thing just came together as an experiment that worked out. Sometimes experiments are edible; sometimes they are much better than that. This time around the meal would be a salad, shrimp and some kind of sauce with rice noodles.

A large onion and a few cloves of garlic were started sautéing, and the thought of a cheese sauce that included wine magically appeared from the murky depths of what passed for thought while still concerned for my friend. Some wine was added along with what seemed to be a reasonable mix of herbs and seasonings, covered, and left to simmer. While getting the rest of the meal going some rice milk was added in about twice the amount of wine used. Eventually an egg or two was tempered in and some shredded mozzarella was melted in.

The shrimp might have gone in the salad but wound up in the mix with the sauce and noodles. Maybe it was just because it was different or maybe it was the day but the result was pretty darned good. I’ve committed the process to memory for future use and noted that chicken chunks would also work really well.

My friend dealt with the blindness well for a couple weeks, but was also deaf and dealing with other issues of age. She was a good cat.