More Food!

OK, The Pedant reminded me with his last post that I've been bad at posting. We've done some great cooking and I should share. Since I just don't have time to let you know what I've made the last month, I'll start with the last weekend:

Rye and Cornmeal Muffins: I saw this recipe in the New York Times and it was great. Super easy to make and really tasty. We had them for dinner with a Quick Belgian Salad from the salad cookbook. Very yummy.

Minestrone Soup: I have to say that I've become known (well, with TP) for my Minestrone soup. It' a pretty easy recipe: cook some veg in broth (usually water though - then it makes a broth plus LOTS of spices), add a can or two of tomato paste, put in beans and pasta, let it get thick and yummy. I made it again this weekend from a batch of vegetable soup I made a few weeks ago. It's super tasty.

Fennel and Onions with Capers: Lidia Bastianich (whom I love) has a great and easy recipe for fennel and onions with capers. We made it in a much smaller pan than usual (since we were making it with some chicken soup and turkey meatballs for TP - I'll let you hear about it from him) so it took longer for the veg to caramelize but man, this dish is tasty!

New obsession: Trader Joe's. I like their low fat string cheese so much. Also, they have mini goat cheeses that come in a pre-packaged 1 oz block. Perfect for omelets. Or anything else. Mmmm.... And they have these super cheap pouches of beans - soybeans and chickpeas. So tasty.

Caffeine, Races, Ice Cream, Paella

I haven't updated about my caffeine and other food recently. I've kept a good equilibrium for half-caf coffees this week. I did slip up a bit on Saturday. We went to a different farmer's market and I was kind of cranky so decided to have a coffee. But it was a bit larger than I expected. However, it was really good, and I intend to go back to the store (they had a table at the market even though they are across the street).

Saturday, we had a pretty tasty lunch of hot dogs (well, veggie dogs for me) and homemade ketchup we bought at the farmer's market the week before, plus some couscous and a salad. For dinner, we made a beet, asparagus (from farmer's market) and egg (again, from farmer's market and SO GOOD - the yolks were bright yellow like they should be!) salad from the best salad cookbook, plus some quinoa and cabbage (thanks Bittman!).

Sunday morning I got up REALLY early to run a 10 mile race. It was my very first 10 mile race and I was really excited and happy how I did. (I did it in 1 hour, 44 minutes! Go me!) The race ended in Old Town Alexandria and The Pedant met me at the finish line (he also cheered me on in the last leg). They had some food at the finish line - bagels (which were NOT real bagels, just bread products), bananas (yuck) and chips. I'm not usually hungry immediately after I finish a big race, so I had a bottle of water and we started to walk to the Metro. TP was a bit hungry, so we stopped by Le Pain Quotidian, a great chain, for some breakfast. TP had a mochachino and a croissant sandwich. I ordered 2 soft-boiled eggs (TP ate one of them) and it came with lots of tasty bread. It was perfect, although the server got a little annoyed that's all we were ordering. I did make myself a mocha with coffee and light chocolate soy milk when I got home.

We made a carrot and cheddar salad for lunch from the salad cookbook. It was fair - but not something we'll do again (although we amended the recipe a bit). We both ended up eating a bit too much of it and by the time dinner rolled around we didn't feel like making paella, which we planned to eat. We did, however, have a new Ben and Jerry's flavor of ice cream for dinner. Which is the only reason I run.

Last night TP made the paella. It was a Bittman recipe (of course) and had mushrooms. It came out really, really well.

More Weekly Cooking

UGH! We have become such neglectful bloggers...It seems we have little time to cook, let alone post, except for weekend updates. So, here is (yet another) weekend update.

Saturday, I had a GREAT training run for a 10 mile race coming up next month. 9 miles in 1:35:50! I was PUMPED. So, to celebrate, (although WW hates when I treat myself with food...) The Pedant and I headed off to our local sushi place. I did eat a bit too much, but had a great appetizer of complementary fired tofu (I guess they were out of miso? Sad.), green salad with super tasty ginger dressing, edamame, avocado roll, kampia (squash) rool and tamgo (egg). It was as tasty as ever. For dinner, we enjoyed a homemade fiesta! We repeated the jicama and avocado salad from the best salad cook book and ate it with an Atlantic Magazine Food Channel recipe based off of Bobby Flay's Black Bean Jalapeno soup. I had made the soup before and it was amazing. This time, it was good but the jalapeno peppers were not quite as spicy as before and the kick wasn't as intense. Oh well. We also bought some Edy's slow churned Thin Mint ice cream.

Sunday we had a wedding and enjoyed our time there. Since the wedding was in the afternoon, we stopped off at the supermarket for some veggies to make a light salad for dinner. We also did some cooking for the week. It included making our own smoked paprika hummus and a sweet potato and quinoa salad. The hummus came out really well. But, it's hard for it not too. Not as smooth as some brands but I'm NOT removing the skins of the chick peas in order to get the smoothness that requires. The quinoa salad was a Bittman recipe for lunches. I've read a few places sweet potatoes are great for runners and they are also SUPER tasty. This salad was pretty easy - boil sweet potatoes diced into bite size pieces, add quinoa, red pepper, shallot. Vinaigrette dressing of EVOO and sherry vinegar. Salt and pepper. Enjoy.

Sunday Night Cooking!

Since our lives are busy and we are a) cheap, b) health conscious and c) much prefer to eat our own cooking than buy lunches/dinners because of reasons a) and b), Sundays have been spent cooking food for the week. This is what we made:

Vegetable Pizza

During the snow storm, I made some whole wheat pizza dough to freeze. Last night, I made a pizza with some of this dough and it came out really well. The dough was a bit sticky and I needed to add a lot of extra flour and it was on the thinner side on some parts. The Pedant made pizza last week for dinner so we had some extra sauce and cheese. I sauteed up a shallot, a bunch of asparagus and mushrooms in some balsamic and let it get really well cooked. (Mostly because I spent more time fussing with the pizza, but it turned out great!) The pizza came out really well.

Farnase Salad

Another winner from the best salad cookbook. Also eaten for dinner last night. It was fennel, red onion, oranges and parsley in a salad dressing of lemon juice, olive oil and honey. It was really good. We had that with the pizza for dinner.

Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

I love sweet potatoes and have read recently that sweet potatoes are good for runners. So, I decided to make this slow cooker chili. It looked okay when I took it out of the slow cooker this morning. I usually like my chili thicker, but it smelled really good because I put in a lot of chili powder and chipotle powder.

Wild Rice and Barley Salad

Dinner tonight from the best salad book. It has wild rice, barley, LOTS of shallots, celery, golden raisins and almonds. Should be tasty.

And now, a movie plug. We watched Word Play last night. It was great!

Saturday Night Fiesta Dinner

I'm training for a 10 mile race coming up in April and have been going on long runs. Saturday morning, while running 7 miles (!!!!) I had plenty of time to think about food, which is the only reason I run. We had some leftover mini potatoes that needed to be used and what better way to make potatoes than in Tortilla Espanola. So The Pedant and I had a Spanish/Mexican dinner that was fantastic.

Tortilla Espanola

I sliced the potatoes very thin. We sauteed them up with 1/2 a vidalia onion and a bunch of garlic in (too much - my hand slipped!) olive oil. Sadly, it was not Spanish olive oil like Jose Andres would have liked, but whatever. We let that cook until the potatoes got cooked and the onions browned really nicely. We then used egg beaters to make a tortilla. Sadly, it didn't flip as well as hoped, but it was super tasty.

Jicama Avocado Salad

While looking for food for the week, TP passed this salad recipe in the best salad cookbook and wondered why we hadn't made this salad yet. We decided it was similar to the "Spanish" theme and cooked it up. It was very simple - chopped jicama, chopped avocado, cilantro, red onion, lemon juice, olive oil. It was really amazing.

Dinner was just lovely. We bought some Ben and Jerry's light Phish Food which made it even better.

Busy Cooking Weekend!

Yesterday afternoon, after a trip to the store, The Pedant and I spend a snowy afternoon cooking up a storm. We made a fantastic dinner plus lots of food for the week. Now that I'm back in school and coming home late and TP working long hours again, we needed to make sure we have lots of extra food on hand. Going out to eat is fun, but not worth wasting the money or calories for sub-par lunch options!!

So here's a round up of the great food we cooked for the week:

Cauliflower Salad from everyone's favorite Monk. It was basically easy - steam cauliflower (we just boiled it in some water since we had it boiling for some later), put it in a bowl with hard boiled eggs, shallots and capers. Make a tasty dressing with hazelnut oil, EVOO, dijon, white wine vinegar and tarragon (which we didn't have so we used herbs de provonance). I tasted it and it was really good. I think it will get better in the next few days in the fridge.

Southwest Egg Muffins from Pinch My Salt. I found this recipe a while ago and printed it out. I decided to make some egg cups for freezing for quick, easy breakfasts or lunches. Like a mini fritata! I hadn't tried this recipe but it came out well. I did use less eggs but I think it came out fine. I bought egg substitute (because 8 whole eggs just seemed grotesque for someone who grew up eating mostly egg whites!) and misread the bottle so I used 4 egg's worth. I think it was fine.

Veggie Egg Cups from Slashfood. I made this last year and enjoyed it. This year it worked well too. (Although harder to get the muffin tins cleaner than I remembered!!) The cups were a little runnier when we took them out of the oven but still looked tasty.

Saturday Night Italian Feast!!

Dinner was a great feast complete with leftovers for the week. I decided to make stuffed shells which I never had before. They turned out well. I mixed some ricotta cheese with frozen spinach and stuffed the shells with that. (Note: I will need more than one tub of ricotta and 1 box of spinach next time...) I made a really simple tomato sauce and topped them with just a bit of mozzarella cheese. The only problem was that the shells broke in the box so we were left with lots of pieces. Solution: Appetizer of broken shell pieces with some EVOO, Parmesan, sea salt and red pepper flakes.

We made 2 salads: orange and red onion salad which I love. It's sweet and sour and savory and salty. And easy: just use rounds of oranges and slices of red onions, place on platter (or our case, rectangular container for easier clean up), drizzle with EVOO and sea salt. The other was from the best monk and was a Venetian Gorgonzola Salad. It made a lot so we have plenty left over. It was arugula, endive, radicchio, frisse, granny smith apples, walnuts, Gorgonzola and a dijon-based dressing. It was perfect. Elegant and classic.

We also made lunch yesterday from last week's Minimalist column: the fried rice. It was simple and perfect and delicious. Definitely becoming part of the rotation.

A Weekend of Carbo Loading Before (and after) a Race

This was yet another weekend of good food - both cooking and being cooked for. Here's the story:

Friday Night: The Pedant and I had very little food in the house by the end of the week and after a long week decided to treat ourselves to dinner out at our local sushi place before seeing Good Hair (Highly recommended!). The place was really busy, but the sushi was as good as ever. Even though I don't eat fish, I personally enjoy sushi - it's never too much for me and I never come out super stuffed or eat too much. Plus, I do love avocados. It can get pricey but it's worth it to know I'm eating better than cheesy Italian food or fatty Chinese food.
Saturday Dinner: I was running my first 10K Sunday morning and needed to "carbo load" (i.e., make a recipe TP saw on line). We made butternut squash risotto from Cook's Illustrated and it was really tasty. It was very different than the butternut squash risotto that TP made last week but really tasty. We amended the recipe a bit - mostly because we bought cut up squash without seeds or fibers (easier to deal with) so we didn't let the stock simmer with the seeds or fibers. But it was still really, really good. We thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sunday Brunch: Since I ran the 10K that day (with a pace about 30 seconds better than I did for my 5K and my best time ever! 64 (or 68, depending on the time on the website) minutes!), we had planned to make pancakes. However, both TP and I were tired and felt like treating ourselves (well, me, I ran, TP just cheered me on) so we decided to forgo pancakes (which we better make soon since we stocked up on maple syrup!) and went for brunch instead. We went to a creperie I'd been wanting to try and it was really, really good. I got the Crepe Moroccan which was like spinach pie filling in a crepe with a delicious mint-yogurt sauce. We shared the Just Peachy desert crepe and it was just peachy and super. (I did have PB&J before my race, a granola bar and 1/2 a (white bread but part of my post race food packet) bagel toasted with butter and honey before we went for brunch.)

Sunday Dinner: After a much needed nap we began making some dinner foods. Since we still have a hoard of potatoes we found a soup base recipe in Lidia's Family Table for a savory potato broth. That took a while to make (more time than we realized) but the end result was great. We froze more than half of it and made a garlic and onion soup with the rest of the broth. We poached some garlic in water and chopped up an onion and then let them thicken in the broth before pureeing it. And it was SO GOOD. I think I can't stress how good it was, since it was SO GOOD. SO GOOD. The best part (other than the garlic and onions and broth was the pureed bits of Parmesan cheese rind that was a little present. SO GOOD.

To go along with that soup, we made a crunchy couscous salad from our favorite benedictine. It was pretty good, but I think it had too many cucumbers.

I also prepped our last massive sweet potato and acorn squash for a slow cooker soup recipe for winter squash and sweet potato soup. We'll have that for dinner tonight with pasta in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce. Yum!

Here is Sherbs running her 10K. I'm the one in the red shirt (showing my support for Jody Wagner) and the purple jacket tied around my waist

Starting a New Year Off Right

This past weekend was Rosh Hashanah. The Pedant and I were going to TP's parents for services and meals. TP's mom asked us to bring 2 salads, one for a meat meal and one for a dairy meal (since most of our family keeps kosher). Last week had been really busy, so while I was at work, TP researched salads that would be easy to make, delicious and fitting in with our religious obligations. We chose 2 orzo salads and they were both a hit.

First, the "meat" salad. It was a Bon Appetite recipe that we found on Epicurus. The Orzo, Green Bean, and Fennel salad with Dill Pesto was a HIT. The fennel gave it a really lovely flavor and worked really well with the dill pesto. It was fresh, colorful and fairly healthy - not too much pasta (which is one of the lovely things of orzo - a little goes a long way).

The "dairy" salad was from the monastery salad cookbook, which is always so good to us. We had made it before. It is orzo, olives, green peas, red pepper and red onion in a mayonnaise sauce with dijon mustard and lemon juice dressing. The problem we had the first time we made it was that the onion (1 red onion, thinly sliced) was SO sharp it rendered the salad inedible. All you tasted was ONION. (For leftovers, we added more mayo and mustard and an avocado and it was still ONION!) This time, we tasted the onion first and instead of using the entire thing in slices, we use 1/5 of it chopped very fine, which gave it the flavor but did not overpower it. (We also used more may this time since it wasn't just us eating the salad.) And it was perfect. Refreshing, sweet (the peas) and tangy (the onions - even just the few tablespoons!) it was a great lunch dish.

Vaguely Mexican Dinenr

Last night we had a vaguely Mexican Dinner - perhaps in preparation for Cinco De Mayo? Probably not, mostly because we wanted to do a crock pot dinner since I was working and The Pedant was out with friends. We decided to make a black bean soup which we've had before and it's been good. So TP set it in the afternoon and I made a salad when I came home. Which I am very proud of. It was:

Romaine lettuce
A perfectly ripe avocado (it was so creamy and delicious)
Sliced white mushrooms
A red onion
A can of corn

The dressing was great and light:
EVOO
Lemon juice (from a bottle - foodies don't yell at me!)
3 minced garlic cloves
Salt
Pepper
Splenda sugar blend

The salad came together nicely. There was a sweetness and tartness in the dressing which was binded with the avocado also. The corn added color and the onion wasn't too strong.

The soup was also really very good. It was the perfect dinner. I'm very excited for leftovers for lunch (with some fat-free crumbled feta on my salad!).

April Foods!

Man, I haven't posted in a while. I guess I've been too busy catching up on Kings, the biblically-themed monarchy drama that is, as my sister so often says, "awesome sauce." And not just because it stars Ian McShane, the voice of the killer leopard in Kung Fu Panda.

Anyway, the Sherbs and I have been making plenty of tasty food. This Saturday we went back to the Book of a Million Zillion Curries (comic book reference explained here) for dinner, and made both the tasty tea and chickpea curry and a curry of French green lentils and too much spinach. Turns out the recipe makes something like eight cups of food, so I'm glad we broke out the big pot; it's not easy to wilt two pounds of spinach in boiling water already full of lentils. Also: it made the water turn really green.

What was kind of interesting about the spinach/lentil curry is that it basically was boiled spinach and lentils with what I'd call a "sauteed pico de gallo" tossed in during the last fifteen minutes. If tomatoes were in season, there would probably be a bit more flavor (also, we ran short of cumin - who keeps track of how much cumin they have?), but the spinach was otherwise tasty and a good counterpoint to the chickpeas, which were spicy.

The chickpea spiciness could be in part due to the serious chopping of the serrano chiles in that recipe; we have an off-brand Slap Chop® (for immature but hilarious parody, click here; for incident involving the Slap Chop® pitchman and a prostitute, click here) that does in fact make short work of garlic, ginger, and serrano peppers, rendering them into tiny bits in a matter of moments. With more pepper surface area exposed to the oil in the pan, we got more spiciness.

Tomorrow's dinner will involve another salad from the Benedictine monks. This one will require me to make carrot matchsticks tonight. Wish me luck; I can never get them small enough.

The Healthy and the Oh So Unhealthy

First, the healthy. Last week, I had dinner with a friend at a very tasty Lebanese restaurant. We shared a few mezzas - grape leaves, fatteh, and she got a lamb dish and I got a dished called Baked Cheese (tangent from healthy - it was not. It was literally baked cheese. And so good.) And then we shared a Goat Cheese and Orange salad. From the website: "Mixed greens with orange, dates and walnuts. Tossed with citrus vinaigrette and Nigella seeds." It was done perfectly. Very tasty! So I've been on an orange in salad kick. Last week for a snack I sectioned an orange into some romaine lettuce with EVOO and fat free feta cheese and sesame seeds. It was perfect. Last night for a quick dinner I made a salad with shredded cabbage (that's like 2 weeks old...but still good!), romaine, baby spinach, black beans and beer (leftover), FF feta, a poached egg (my first official one! it wasn't too bad!), EVOO, wine vinegar, orange sections and some salt. It was very good. Sweet, tangy, salty, perfect.

Now, the important stuff. The Unhealthy. I love Cadbury Creame Eggs. With a passion. Because they are awesome and delicious and perfect. Just the right mix of unhealthy cream to not the best chocolate. And you get to suck out the center. I usually have one (or 2?) a year. I had one Sunday. It was perfect. Only problem: I WANT MORE! Like, an entire stack of them. I want a Cadbury bunny to lay them for me. And, I have to go to CVS to pick up a prescription for The Pedant later so I may not be able to resist...but I will try. Since I hit some frozen cookies that were lying around the freezer pretty hard last week. But, oh, such decadent cream!

Salad Unholy Mess

Tonight's dinner was from our monastery salad cookbook, and it was called a "salad picardie," evidently because it's from the Picardy region of France (and wholly unrelated to any spaceship captains played by Patrick Stewart).

It was also a recipe to spray stuff all over the kitchen.

First, the main ingredients were tough to toss. Shredded cabbage, thinly sliced red onion, cauliflower florets, and cubed cucumber really want to throw themselves out of the bowl as if they were lifeboat-less passengers on the Titanic rather than combine into a useful salad base.

Second, I can't peel hard boiled eggs. Fortunately, they're supposed to be chopped, so crumbly egg was not a problem.

Third, the roquefort, which is supposed to crumble, didn't. At room temperature, it assumes the same consistency as Play-Doh®. Have you ever crumbled Play-Doh®? I haven't been able to. I tried "flaking" the cheese from the measuring cup with a fork, which transferred uneven clumps of soft moldy cheese to the fork. And then I shook the fork vigorously, throwing cheese clumps across the kitchen and anywhere but in the bowl.

Fourth, after adding the chopped nuts and the dressing (that was easy), I had to toss again. The salad still wished to flee.

Fortunately, enough salad stayed in the bowl for the Sherbs and I to have dinner. It was quite a tasty salad, if a complete production.

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.

Don't that beet all?

The Sherbs has pretty much covered all of our meal at Founding Farmers, save two things:

1) My salad, which had pretty much everything in it. Mixed greens, slivered almonds, tomatoes, grapes, olives, cheese, and a champagne vinaigrette. Really delicious.

2) My closing cocktail, which was a Hemingway-inspired mix of champagne and absinthe. It was green and thujone-tastic. Seriously, though, it was cool, crisp, and would make a great apertif at parties, although, given its combination of anise flavors and tartness, less is probably more.

Last night we had a salad from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Twelve Months of Monastery Salads Where You Can Totally Halve the Amount of Oil in the Dressing. One of the more attractive Benedictine salad recipes was a "Dutch egg salad," which we had to try.

The salad involves beets, endive, cheese, shallots, and hard-boiled eggs in a dijon/yogurt dressing. Other than painting half the kitchen pink while chopping and boiling the beets, the food prep was uneventful. The end result: tasty, save for one too-sharp shallot. A keeper of a salad.

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.

Dinner Possible!

After finally getting back into the swing of things (but missing Spain oh-so-much!) The Pedant and I have begun cooking again.

salad. The Sunday we had an excellent dinner. It was a really simple and tasty light dinner: a tortellini salad. The recipe came from a low-fat vegetarian cook book. Basically, cook refrigerated tortellini. Make a salad with mixed greens, a pepper and some mushrooms. Make a dressing out of white wine vinegar, sugar, EVOO and water. Put some crutons in (which TP made himself from a mini baguette). Toss. Enjoy.

And we did.

Last night for dinner we made a chick pea tagine from this months' Vegetarian Times. It came out well. Although we didn't realize it until today's lunch since our sink was leaking. In order to avoid a large smelly pile of dishes, we went out to the local Greek place. Only problem: the food was sooooo tasty (not the problem) I ate it all and got a belly ache in the middle of the night (problem). Oh well.

Lament, Lauds, etc.

[Note: I started this post this morning before The Pedant blogged.]

There are no excuses for our lack of blogging. It's not like we've eaten bad food lately. On the contrary, it's been quite good. Perhaps life has gotten in the way? Perhaps we have become bored with blogging? Both untrue, both lame excuses.

So, I find myself blogging again. I will both lament and laud several things.

First the lament:

At a lovely wedding this weekend, really it was lovely, there was only one problem: trio deserts! The Pedant and I are sick of trio deserts. It is not Iron Chef! You are not running a tasty restaurant in Alexandria! Give me many or give me one! Also, no wedding cake. I want frosting dammit! However, the deserts were very tasty and they had little truffles with a ganache that was probably frosting.

Now onto the lauds:

Iced Coffee: I have begun making iced coffee for the warmer summer days for work. I just double brew the coffee, fill with ice and milk and splenda and when I get to work it's delightfully cold. I am super smart. Best idea ever.

Summer Salads from Vegetarian Times: Last week for dinners, TP and I made 2 "summer salads" from VT, and orzo and an Asian noodle. Both were incredibly light and tasty. Hooray!

Brunch 2: The Brunchening

Yesterday the Sherbs and I made brunch for about ten people. Our menu, revealed now that the guests are no longer surprised by our cooking ability:

1) Mini Fritatta from our super-difficult vegetarian cookbook. This recipe puts sauteed leeks and cubed sweet potato into an egg/feta mixture, then bakes them in muffin tins. They were crumbly, but delicious.

2) Shakshouka from the Sherbs's personal recipe.

3) Egg salad with caramelized onions, also from the Sherbs.

4) The corn, snap peas, pepper, and dill salad from the diet blog that had done so well for us in the past.

5) Home-made pita chips (whole wheat pita) coated with a little bit of olive oil and zatar, then baked. Served with store bought hummus and babaganouj, and home-made lima bean dip.

6) Fruity couscous from a Weight Watcher's cookbook. You can put in three times as much orange juice as the recipe requires and it will turn out OK.

7) Fruit salad.

Other people brought desserts, including some delectable lemon squares, and delicious fun was had by all. Today the Sherbs and I had Brunch 2, where we ate the leftovers; the mini fritatta went quite well with two strips of Morningstar fake bacon and slices of toasted blueberry breakfast bread spread with Smart Balance "spread."

Food Photo Post - Canada!

Today, this blog is like all the other food blogs, because I managed to sync my digital camera with our iMac and now you can have pictures of food! Welcome to the twenty-first century of blogging!

First, the Canada pictures that we promised something like four months ago.
Here is a toffee on snow thing that I didn't feel confident enough in my French to buy. It looked good, though.
Here's our first meal in Quebec City; Caesar salad, French onion soup, and poutine. Delicious, if heart-stopping.

Salads and Knife Fights

Mostly touristy foods yesterday; we saw the Israel Museum, which was jam-packed, half-closed for renovations, and had some tasty kosher for Passover salads (the sandwiches, I heard, were a little disappointing). Once again I am impressed with the mixed greens of Israel.

Also tasty was the shwarma place called "Big Shwarma" 1/3 of the way down the pedestrian part of Ben-Yehuda Street. The chopped meat on a rotating spit was well-spiced and quite tasty, and served with fries and veggies (no pita this week, for obvious reasons).

I also discovered, while scanning the local cable channels, that Israel has its own version of Iron Chef called something like "Knife Fight." In Knife Fight, each chef prepares a course for a celebrity panel, and they vote yay or nay; the yays and nays are tallied up per course throughout the five-course meal. Sadly, the French chef ("Stephan") beat the local hero, even though he made what looked like sweetbreads. As I've mentioned before on this blog, you can make sweetbreads taste good.