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Home > 365 days of dinner: Feb. 2-5, 2009

365 days of dinner: Feb. 2-5, 2009

February 6th, 2009 at 06:04 am

Monday we had a "golden vegetable casserole with herbed dumplings." Mixed reviews. NT loved it, AS could barely eat it, and I thought it was pretty good. The main thing that bugged me was that it was stovetop; how then could it be a casserole? I think England has a different sense of that word than we do. Also I'd never done dumplings before, and I'm not sure they were right, though NT insisted they were delicious.



Tuesday night we had pizza (this will pop up frequently because it's our favorite dinner). The only thing unique is we used the rest of our bolognese sauce as the pizza sauce.



Last night we had friends over, and I had a craving for that staple vegetarian option at restaurants, grilled portobello sandwich with roasted red pepper, spinach and garlic aioli. AS made an amazing focaccia to go with it, and NT suggested oven-baked sweet potato fries, which ended up going beautifully with the sandwich. Here's a pic of the sandwich open-face before I put it together.



Tonight we had a wonderful meal: gnocchi with tomato sauce, served on a bed of fresh spinach. I got the idea from some blog but used a gnocchi recipe from a cookbook I have, The Compassionate Cook. I added herbes de provence to the dough so the gnocchi would have more flavor. I don't generally follow a recipe for tomato sauce because it's so delicious no matter what. This time I put a can of crushed tomatoes with olive oil, minced garlic/onion/green pepper, Italian seasoning mix, basil, oregano, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes, and a little Splenda, and let it simmer for about an hour while I worked on the gnocchi.



After dinner, NT grilled some pineapple on the George Forman. It was sooooo good! Grilling caramelizes the juice and gives the outside a sweetness that's, well, caramel-y, while the inside is tart and warm and juicy. It tastes so decadent, it's hard to believe it's healthy.

Posted in 365 Days of Dinner | 7 Comments »

7 Responses to “365 days of dinner: Feb. 2-5, 2009”

  1. whitestripe Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 06:11 am 1233900682
    1233900682

    yum. as always, everything looks delicious. puts my tofu nachos to shame!

  2. shiela Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 09:41 am 1233913260
    1233913260

    Grilled or bbq pineapple is my favourite.

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 04:19 pm 1233937170
    1233937170

    Tofu nachos sounds awesome, actually! How do you use the tofu, blended as a cheese sauce or diced up as the "meat"?

  4. creditcardfree Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 04:22 pm 1233937358
    1233937358

    Thanks for sharing all your meals. It's very inspiring. I need to learn how to make bread of any kind, but focaccia would be really yummy!

  5. ceejay74 Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 04:29 pm 1233937794
    1233937794

    ccf: This has been a great experiment for us, because it's caused us to add more variety to our meals. In a normal year, we would have repeated several menus by now, but so far we've only repeated pizza. It's also made me think about presentation; I used to think "just slop it on a plate--if it tastes good it doesn't matter how it looks." Well-plated food is a pleasure to the eyes as well as the other senses.

    The only drawback is, now I really want a better camera! LOL.

  6. whitestripe Says:
    February 6th, 2009 at 09:29 pm 1233955770
    1233955770

    ceejay: i just dice the tofu as the 'meat', add a can of kidney beans, a jar of tomato passata and turmeric, paprika, ceyenne & cumin. Smile oh and i usually add garlic, onion and chopped carrot. meals without veges just dont seem like meals...

  7. pearlieq Says:
    February 7th, 2009 at 12:31 am 1233966693
    1233966693

    The pineapple looks amazing. I'll have to try that one day!

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