Sarah made a delicious dinner of spaghetti and meatballs. She used some shortcuts like Rao’s vodka sauce and Rosina’s Italian meatballs which made the prep go more quickly. It turned out delicious and it was lovely to have the night off!
Saturday is our new take-out day. I usually feel a little cooking burnout by the end of the week so I thought Saturday would be a good day for having dinners that I would not normally make at home. Saturday we had banh mi sandwiches from Lee’s Sandwiches. Normally I get their vegetarian banh mi but due to some sort of renovations going on the vegetarian banh mi was pulled from the menu. I decided on grilled pork instead. It was fine but not as good as my usual vegetarian sandwich.
Banh mi are Vietnamese sandwiches filled with various meats, pickled vegetables, jalapeño slices, and cilantro. They seem a combination of Vietnamese foods and French rolls probably from the fact that Vietnam was a long time possession of France. It is definitely a good combination!
Sarah did the cooking tonight. Using Muir Glen chili starter simplified the dish. After browning the ground beef she added beans and the chili tomatoes. Since this can of chili starter was mild she added some chipotle powder. I served mine over kale to increase the vegetable portion. We also had shredded cheese, tortilla chips, and sour cream. Easy and delish!
Lamb is our favorite meat to grill. The grilling, along with lamb’s slight gaminess, is a great pairing. We buy these loin lamb chops at Costco. They come from New Zealand and are reasonably priced. John does a great job grilling them to medium rare. For my part I steamed some broccoli and microwaved new potatoes until they were just done through. John then put them on the grill for a delicious char.
This shrimp dinner is always a hit at our house. This time I doubled the delicious sauce so we would have plenty. I have posted it before so if you’d like to see the recipe refer to my earlier blog post.
Ah, it is Autumn and the leaves are changing color and the temperature hovers around 100F. I have explained in the past how September is really hot in Northern California. On Tuesday we experienced the hottest day of the year and Monday wasn’t much better. If you do not live in close proximity to the ocean you can expect to be really hot in September.
Foodwise this means that I need to find dishes that do not take much cooking and definitely do not need cooking in the oven. Here’s what we did to beat the heat.
Monday we augmented and heated up in the microwave the Sicilian swordfish sauce from last week. This time we put it on quickly seared tilapia and precooked rice
On Tuesday we experienced a “Smart Day.” This is when PG&E, our electric and gas utility company, asks us not to run appliances and air conditioning during peak usage hours. So we started out the day by going out to lunch at a sushi restaurant where we enjoyed a bento box.
Keeping in the spirit of not cooking and not using electricity we had hummus, pita, tabouli, and tomatoes for dinner.
On Wednesday it is supposed to cool down and we are really keeping our fingers crossed that this spell of hot, hot weather is the last for this year.
We did our celebrating of Rosh Hashanah on Friday night because on Monday, the actual date, it is supposed to be in the upper 90s and too hot for baking and making soup. Sarah made a lovely round challah in the morning and I made our usual Autumn soup and a plateful of symbolic foods. We toasted each other and hoped for a more compassionate and peaceful 5786.
It has finally cooled off for a few days so I thought I’d make soup. This clam chowder is one of our favorites. Here’s the recipe from my blog entry last January.
Oops! I did not post the recipe in January so here it is instead—
Omnivore 