Weekend Wrap-up

The weather outside was perfect for doing nothing, and the pretty much the only things that got done inside involved food. 

Saturday's lunch with fresh greens and bread from the City Market.

Saturday's dinner: rigatoni with zucchini, tomato and sausage.

Sunday's breakfast: blueberry pancakes topped with greek yogurt, maple syrup and pecans.

Sunday afternoon's project:  Banana Crumb Muffins.

What a mess.

But worth it.  Breakfast for the week!!

Sunday dinner: Swiss chard from City Market.

Nearly a vegetarian version of last night's dinner, using different veggies and with bread instead of pasta.

And I am nearly ready for it to be Monday again; it must have been a good weekend ;-)

gReeN

Today was quite the Monday.  I didn't sleep particularly well last night, and there were some very noisy birds outside at least an hour before my alarm went off.   Then, just as I was unlocking my bike to go to work, it started raining (yes, better then than en route).  I drove instead, but the gates to parking garage were down and my parking pass expired at the end of May.  

My job today was culling old files, removing all of the metal clips to get them ready for shredding.  Unlike last week, when I got to laugh at people's senior portraits from the 80's and 90's, today I was going through application files with portfolios from very talented people who either did not get in, or decided not to attend UVA's School of Architecture.  And while it took a long time to remove spiral bindings and the like, I spent no where near the time the applicants did putting them all together.

I came home a bit after 5, hungry and a little discouraged after destroying other people's creative work.  I ate a banana with peanut butter and decided to make a recipe I found over the weekend, to use up some leftover ricotta and make myself something a little fancy to counteract my afternoon.

Zucchini and Ricotta Galette from Smitten Kitchen was my starting point.  I found pre-made pie crust on sale at the store for $0.75 yesterday, so I wasn't even going to pretend to make my own crust.  I picked out some nice looking zukes at the Farmer's Market and dusted off the mandolin slicer.

While rooting around in the fridge for the other ingredients, I came across some old green beans on their way out, and thought they matched the color scheme nicely.  I washed them thoroughly and picked out the slimy ones (ugh!), drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and set aside to roast while the galette was cooking.

Fitting with the theme of the day, the ricotta I specifically found this recipe to use up had already turned a disturbing pink color and acquired a funky smell.  Ooops.  I substituted Greek yogurt, used feta instead of mozzarella and added a splash of lemon juice to the cheese filling.

I unrolled the pie crust, spread out the cheese filling and began to "shingle the zucchini attractively on top" as called for in the recipe.

I folded up the edges and drizzled with the remaining garlic/olive oil mixture.  I skipped the egg wash because I don't like having 1/2 of an egg sitting in the fridge.  I eat plenty of eggs, but can never remember to use up forgotten halves.

Green beans roasted and galette baked while I sweat it out with Shawn T and the Insanity crew, which was much needed.   Endorphins released, I sat down to my fancy green dinner.  The green beans, being both old and left in the oven for too long were pretty desiccated, but the yummy galette pretty much stole the show.

The pre-made crust turned out to be a great shortcut that allowed me to redeem an otherwise blah day.  The crust came in a two pack--when/how will the remaining one transform my life?!?  Stay tuned....

Kuro Goma Cookies

Kuro goma is Japanese for black sesame.  Here in the US the plain white variety is more familiar, made famous in part by the Big Mac jingle...."blah blah, special sauce on a sesame seed bun!"  This wikipedia article will tell you more than you could ever imagine about sesame seeds.  Betcha you had no idea what the actual plant looked like or that Myanmar was the world's largest exporter.  Japan is the largest importer.

Wait, what am I doing learning all this?  It's summer, and all you and I really need to know is that they taste amazing.  Even (or is it especially?) in cookies.

Not so sure?  Make this recipe--NOW!

It starts out with all the usual suspects.

But then these interlopers are added...

...creating a ridiculously addicting dough, which if you don't eat it all straight from the bowl will produce golden and delicious cookies.

The original recipe from Joy the Baker says to chill the dough for 45 minutes and then roll it into balls by hand and coat with additional black sesame seeds.  This was a messy and time consuming process, and I was afraid the cookies were going to have way too much sesame on the outside.

My fears were unfounded.  Maybe there is no such thing as too much sesame.  But the second (yes, second) time I made this recipe skipped the chilling and sprinkled extra seeds on top of the cookies I scooped using a cookie dropper, which resulted in the beauties below.

I took these to a potluck, where they were deemed an ideal combination between a cookie and a bagel.  But apparently everyone was on Atkins, since there were a bunch left at the end of the night.  Too bad for them, and too bad for my waistline as I have no problem consuming several at one time and repeating throughout the day.

Same, but different

I can't remember the last time I actually used a recipe to make dinner.  On Wednesday, I had good intentions of changing that, using this recipe for stuffed poblano peppers from Better Homes & Gardens.

The picture looks straight forward enough:  pepper vessels for a yummy medley of recognizable things I probably have on hand.  Right?

Wrong.  I made so many substitutions that by the end, my dinner was only very loosely based on the recipe. Pepper vessel, check.  Filling, check.  Actual use of listed ingredients?  Close to zero.

It was still nice to try something new and use up some things at the same time.  One of those things was frozen sausage Keizo brought back from his adventure to Polyface Farm back in March.  

I scrambled up the sausage in the fry pan, adding onions, chopped green peppers and some frozen veggies to the mix while a big pot of brown rice cooked up on the other side of the stove.

When the rice was done, I mixed it and a can of drained black beans with the sausage mixture.  I scooped some into pepper halves and put them in the oven for about 15 minutes, adding some shredded cheese to the top during the last few minutes.

Looking lovely, but the peppers still needed something.  Gourmand that I am, I smothered both halves in ketchup!

Perfect.  Who needs recipes?