Food for the Week

Yesterday was Sunday which means I did some cooking for the week, since between work and school I have little time for cooking. And also little money and little caloric needs for going out 2 meals a day. (However, I am probably treating myself to Subway for dinner tonight. I do love Subway. And laziness. But in fairness, I'll be passing Subway on my way home from picking up a packet for my 10 Mile Race this Sunday, so I get a pass, right?)

Regardless, back to food for the week.

I made a pasta dish with shells (they were supposed to be Whole Wheat, but The Pedant couldn't find so we have white wheat pasta which is luxurious after whole wheat...) with asparagus, peas, basil, mint, scallions, lemon zest and feta cheese. It's from Vegetarian Times and I made it last year but kind of screwed up (like, it was supposed to have "garlic oil" so I used garlic powder, which was fine, but not great and I didn't have 1 cup of fresh basil so I used waaaay to much dried and it tasted kind of funky). I fixed my mistakes: lots of fresh basil and I put 2 whole garlic cloves in the measured out oil to flavor it, but not too much. It came out really well. It's totally fresh tasting and delicious. It will be great for lunch. Plus, we got the asparagus at the farmer's market, which is always fun. We also got apples and some really amazing cheddar cheese from a new vendor. I had my book club over so we had a cheese plate - plus meringue cookies which I made for the first time and were great - and it was really great.

I also made granola from scratch (well, from Bittman) which TP and I have gotten into lately. It's incredibly easy to do and really much healthier than the stuff we could buy. I messed it up slightly so the dried fruit got REALLY hard and crunchy, but it came out well.

Although I didn't make it for the week, TP and I had some great food for lunch. We had friends over last week and made a pizza with fresh mozzarella, but had 2 small balls of mozzarella left over. So we sliced that up and put it with some of the fresh basil on chibatta rolls. I added avocado and TP had tomato. I drizzled the rolls with EVOO and balsamic. It was amazing. We had a side salad with a poached egg for protein. Very tasty.

Almost got the Rathbone

So, I decided on the final menu for the party. Joining Hawaiian pizza and Vietnamese rolls will be honey-roasted peanuts (for Biden, because: Amtrak), and baked Alaska if one of my guests makes it.

For the Vietnamese rolls, I needed Thai basil. Sadly, the Teet does not carry it. H-mart probably does, though, which is good, although, like my previous trip to the H-mart, it is not so easy to find things if you don't read Korean. Also: the people in the produce area do not know the English terms for Asian vegetables.

I think what I bought is Thai basil. It doesn't really look like the Wikipedia picture, but it smells right. The scan on the cash register said "Taiwanese basil." The shelf I grabbed it from is labeled "culantro."

So, it may be time for a food adventure.