Cooking Night

Last night was a night of cooking. I sadly, didn't take pictures, but maybe will one day! Not only did I make dinner (with The Pedant!), but I also made soup and zucchini bread and TP made mac and cheese.

Mac and Cheese (times 2)
There was a tiny bit of confusion between me and TP about dinner. I was going to make a baked mac and cheese for dinner since I had milk to use. This is a Vegetarian Times recipe and it's pretty fantastic: using skim milk, you create a "cream" sauce and then add in 1/2 a cup of reduced fat cheddar cheese and 2 tablespoons of Parmesan. You top it with panko and then bake it. It comes out really great and much healthier than regular mac and cheese. So, I had to run some errands after work and asked TP to start water for the pasta. He got home earlier than I expected and started to make the pasta from the mac and cheese he got from the BBQ festival. Since it was Kraft and gooey and delicious (read: too many WW points...) he ended up making the Kraft stuff for himself and we made the mac and cheese from VT for dinner still.

Green Beans
We got a TON of green beans from our CSA and are making a Hungarian Strogonoff in the slow cooker tomorrow, we made a sort of French style green beans with almonds. TP did most of the cooking (I was doing zucchini bread) and they came out great. The beans were still crispy and the slivered almonds were perfectly toasty. It was a great dinner: baked mac and cheese and green beans.

Squash Soup
Since squash is in season, I made (yet again) my new favorite soup - Chilled Curried Squash Soup. (I already have 2 containers in the freezer!) Plus, since squash is in season and super cheap at the Farmer's Market, it's so tasty. It's pretty easy (I've blogged about it here) and fun to play with. For this one, I think I put in too much salt (or, parve chicken soup) and a bit too much curry, but I think it's still tasty.

Zucchini Bread
As I said in my last post, I got a TON of zucchini. I used half of the GIANT one (which means I still have 1/2 a giant zucchini and a large one left!) and made 4 zucchini breads. The recipe I have makes 2 loaves, so I bought some aluminum pans at the Teet on Monday (I only have 2 loaf pans). It was a GIANT batter. I had to use my GIANT glass bowl to mix and it was a work out. Nonetheless the bread came out great and tasty. I've gotten several complements from my coworkers (I brought in a loaf) and will enjoy the other 3 loaves in my freezer.

But now - I need to do something with the rest of my zucchini. Ideas??

Cheese, Pasta, Lentils, Wine - Perfect!

Friday evening, I had another Vegetarian Times win. In the latest issue, they have a whole thing on cheesy dishes redone healthy. 2 weeks ago for lunches, The Pedant and I made their enchiladas - their secret was fat free cottage cheese rinsed and drained so it resembled cheese curds. It was a fantastic dish. (Also, we added more salsa verde because we can take the spice.) They also have a baked macaroni and cheese which I made for dinner Friday (and we've been subsequently eating it all weekend). It was very tasty - made with a roux and skim milk and only 1 cup of cheese for a pound of pasta. Their secret was panko to give it a crisp top. If, nay - WHEN!, I make it again, I would actually use a dash bit less panko. It was almost to crumby. I would probably add the 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese that's put into the cheese sauce on top to create a decadent cheesy crust with the panko. (Also, I would take it out of the oven when it says to, not leaving it in for an extra 5 minutes - the bottom was a little browner than needed.)

Dinner last night was from our new favorite salad book. It was a lentil salad with cucumber, onions, celery and parsley with a lemon/red wine vinaigrette. It was really tasty. Simple and delicious. We added some spinach artichoke poppers and chocolate for dessert, plus a glass of Virgina Rose wine. Perfect Sunday dinner.

Local Food Locally

Yeesh! It has been too long since my last post. New Month Resolution: Post more! Especially since The Pedant and I, like everyone else in the country, have decided to eat out a bit less. We did so on some very good and mediocre restaurants in the month of February so the month of March will be devoted to making lots of good food at home. So hopefully I'll update more about our adventures (especially dinner tonight - it sounds tasty).

Last night was one of those very good restaurants in the month of February. It happened to be our semi-anniversary and we kind of needed an excuse to go out to a superb restaurant. Founding Farmers was all booked up for restaurant week, so I made a reservation for 9 (the earliest I could get that wasn't 5!). The restaurant focuses on local food and organic foods (the former is more important to us, and this summer we will be sharing information about cooking from our CSA!) and it seemed really interesting. After both of us had a very intense hour at the gym (and burned only about 1/8 of the calories we'd eat later...but...) we headed over the restaurant and had a spectacular meal.

Cocktails:

We were about 25 minutes early and headed over to the bar for a drink. TP had "The Constitution" and I enjoyed "La Paloma" which was tequila, grapefruit soda and agave nectar. It was very tasty and very good. The hint of tequila in the background mixed with the tartness of grapefruit was very interesting and tasty.

Salad:

We each got a salad that was very tasty. The house salad was presented very well: the red onions, tomatos (which TP ate because tomatoes are icky), and croutons were topped on an iceberg lettuce half and the green goddess dressing was divine. Literally, goddess-like. It was made from an avocado cream base and decadent.

Wine:

Since we were celebrating, TP and I shared a glass and a half (such an interesting idea and great for sharing if you don't want a bottle and aren't huge wine drinkers!) of the Horton Viognier from VA. (It was only one of two Virgina wine options, and for a restaurant dealing with local food, that's a bit sad, but fine...). It was a very good viognier: not too clawing or dry. We both agreed not quite as good as Pearmund's.

Main Course:

TP wanted to get Fried Chicken and Waffles which just sounded good so to save him some calories I volunteered to eat his mac & cheese and some of the waffles. I opted for the Roasted Vegetable and Avocado sandwich (sans tomato). Basically, a divine sandwich which came with homemade potato chips. The bread was really wonderful. The veggies were roasted well, but not too overdone. The mac & cheese was just so amazing - a cheese sauce made with high quality cheese. The waffles (I could only eat 1/2 of one in the end!) were light and airy, but crisp and crunchy.

Dessert:

Good decaf coffee went well with their carrot cake. We split an ENORMOUS piece which wasn't too sweet and had the best frosting. It was like a butter cream base that just had a hint of cream cheese so that it wasn't sticky, but light and airy. We then sat around and digested for a good 30 minutes. We definitely weren't going to be able to walk the 4 blocks to the metro we were so full!

Verdict:

Going back soon but for less food. The salad was a meal itself! Plus it wasn't too pricey so it's definitely a keeper.

Times, Responses, and Other Excuses to Change the Subject

To play off the Sherbs's previous post: yes, Ikea in Woodbridge, VA has at its restaurant a meal special which pairs fifteen Swedish meatballs in cream sauce with a healthy portion of macaroni and cheese for $5.49. There is also the small dollop of lingonberry sauce (I originally thought it was cranberry, but no - it has to be Swedish, and it has to look like salmon roe) that suffices as the concession to the existence of vegetables in the meal. The Swedish meatballs are in a gravy that Ikea calls "cream sauce." It is delicious. It is food that will kill you.

Today we went to Mai Thai in DC, as the Sherbs had to work late and I believe that eating at Mai Thai gives me a trifecta on credit card points and various other loyalty reward programs. We each had our own soups, which were tasty, but it seems that everything but the tom ka soup uses the tom yam soup base with extra stuff in it. If you love spicy lemongrass soup, you'll love these.

A parenthetical before I continue with the main dishes - the Sherbs and I had a conversation just now about the fact that it was nigh-impossible to find the Thai soups I am blogging about using the Food Network recipe extension for Firefox. Looking on Food Network's programming, there's basically no non-white ethnic food on the channel. Ever. And excessively Caucasian food hosts like Paula "smear it with lard" Deen and Sandra "You Can Make Angel Food Cake Hawaiian by Adding Runts Candy" Lee get tons of airtime. Make no bones about it, I watch a lot of Food Network - but are they racist?

Getting back to our Thai dinner, the Sherbs and I shared a salad and an entree. The salad was made of shredded mango and chopped red onion in a dressing that tasted like lime juice, cane juice, and cilantro. Little bits of toasted coconut were added for texture. Once we get the mandoline blade sharp enough, we are going to try to make it ourselves.

The entree was drunken noodles with tofu. I don't know how authentic the spicy candied version of drunken noodles is, but it's tasty - how could pan frying chow fun noodles not be? We ate every last molecule of it.

Starch n' Mayo - The Possibilities

Sherbs and I had a party today, and included in the prefab party platters we got (we were kinda lazy, unlike the last time, where we ended up baking for a half hour after the guests came and I was burning my fingers on mini pizza bagels - such delicious pain) were bowls of macaroni salad.

"Macaroni salad," in this instance, meaning elbow macaroni, shredded carrots, and mayonnaise. It was fair; a better than industrial mayo would have put it into the "almost good" category.

Still, at its best, it was British food bland. I initially suggested to improve it to add red onions and olives, but the Sherbs, she does not love the olives.

So, instead, I think we should start from scratch with the macaroni salad, and make it more like a German potato salad. Not the Oscar Meyer kind, which is all vinegar and bacon (although Bobby Flay's version of the same, with a smoky meat substitute instead of the bacon, added at the end, might be okay), but the sauce in the version I found on Chow.com, which has mustard, is more what I'm looking for.

Evidently, all German potato salad recipes on the 'net have bacon. I buy mine from the supermarket, and they don't put it in there, possibly so that Jews and Muslims can share in the Teutonic salady goodness.

So, anyway, other than the bacon, that's what I'd mix with the macaroni - a mustard/vinegar mixture with red onions and green onions. If we needed texture, I'd also add sweet bell pepper bits, I think.