Sometimes I do not feel like making and eating what I planned. In these cases it’s good to have back-up supplies. I had buffalo chicken wings in the freezer which appealed to me and left over tabbouleh and roasted golden beets from yesterday. Voila! A perfectly good easy dinner!
I was looking around through my past meals for a vegan/vegetarian meal that we had not eaten for a while. Since pita, hummus, and sides are usually something I make in the summer I knew it would be different from our usual winter fare. So I bought a container of hummus and a bag of pita and the ingredients for the beets and tabbouleh. The tabbouleh recipe I use is from NYTimes Cooking and is very parsley centric. The Times has graciously allowed for some recipes to be shared so here’s the link.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012585-tabbouleh?smid=ck-recipe-iOS-share
We also found golden beets at the grocery store. I much prefer them over the red ones. Last night while I was making the chicken enchiladas in the oven I also roasted the beets. After they are tender you can wipe off the skin with a paper towel. I served them with a lemony vinaigrette and crumbled feta. (Omit or substitute a non-dairy cheese for a vegan dinner.)
August in February was a success! And we didn’t have to turn on the A/C!
While we were away Sarah bought a Costco rotisserie chicken and put the two breasts in the freezer. With one of them I made the chicken enchiladas and a chicken with rice vegetable soup. The other one I am saving for chicken lo mein later this week and maybe classic chicken at the beginning of next week. I was afraid it would be difficult to shred since it was not still warm from the store but the defrosted chicken breast shred with no problem.Along with the chicken I stuffed each enchilada with salsa verde, cheese, and onion. I nestled the 12 enchiladas in a 9 x 9 baking dish and we cooked them in a 400F oven for 25 minutes. I also made some spicy black beans (a drained and rinsed can of black beans, a can of Rotel, and a sprinkling of salt and cumin.) The kale was added to the plate for some greenery.
First of all Happy George Washington’s Birthday because I am old enough to remember that in February we used to celebrate the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington separately and not just a lackluster amalgamation of all the presidents, the good, the mediocre, the bad, and the really bad. Since I am not a dessert maker I did not celebrate with a cherry pie (do kids even know this myth about young George and the chopping down of the cherry tree and his not being able to lie to his father?) Instead we had a dinner of grilled hamburgers and salad. Yum!
We have been in Italy for the past week celebrating having a credit with United Airlines that had to be used. We stayed in Florence the whole time where there are plenty of things to see and you do not need the hassle of a rental car to see them. We had a little self-catering apartment that we figured we could make small meals in and keep the dining out to once a day. So we made our breakfast and dinner in the apartment and went out to lunch each day. So breakfast was usually toast and coffee and tea plus the occasional scrambled eggs. Dinner was often wonderful Italian cold cuts, cheese, and chopped chicken livers which is a Florentine special treat.
I took some pictures of our lunches, of course. So here they are—
I know this is not dining lightly but given the fact that it was just one meal out each day and that we walked everywhere neither John or I gained any weight. What a total win!
Not every day is accounted for since on 2/9 we celebrated our son’s birthday with a dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant and on 2/11 I just ate eggs and toast since we are busy packing for a quick Valentine’s Day trip. Hopefully I will have some yummy things to report on!
Sorry for the messy bowl picture! As usual when I get a bowl of pasta I want to jump right in so I had already started eating it before I was stopped to take a picture. This is another recipe executed by Sarah in her Thursday night dinners showcase. It was really good.
She found the recipe on a Finnish site which has been all the rage on TikTok. Apparently stores were running out of feta because everyone wanted to make it. I am not sure where she found the English translation but here it is.
Original #uunifetapasta recipe translated into english
for 4 persons
1 lb / 450 g italian durum wheat pasta
1 block (7 oz / 200 g) greek feta cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 red chili pepper
500 g cherry tomatoes
(4 garlic cloves if you wish)
black pepper
salt
bunch of fresh basil leaves
Pour some olive on the bottom of the baking dish. Place the whole feta block on top. Chop the red chili pepper and add on top of feta cheese. Pour more olive oil on top. Place the cherry tomatoes on the sides and roll around in oil. Grind some pepper and season with pinch of salt.
Bake in 400 F / 200 C for 15 minutes in the middle rack. Turn the heat to 440 F / 225 C, move the dish to the upper rack and use the grilling mode for another 10 minutes. Caution! This might cause the fire alarm to go off, mine does that every time 😀
Cook the pasta al dente according to cooking instructions. If you used cherry tomatoes with stems, remove them. The stems are there merely for the instagrammable look, so plein cherry tomatoes will do fine.
Break the feta a bit and mix with tomatoes. Mix the sauce with pasta and add plenty of basil leaves.
Tip! Garlic goes well with baked feta pasta. To add garlic cut four garlic cloves in half lenghtwise, toss them in same time as the tomatoes and roll in olive oil.
Sarah said she did not use as much oil as the recipe called for. She probably did that for me since I am constantly dieting. She did use quite a lot of cherry tomatoes which were pretty blah when eaten straight from their container but totally came to life when they were baked. Some of the best bits were small pieces of the feta which were browned under the broiler.
Here’s a pretty picture of the dish from the website—
And here it is with the served with the pasta —
We tried a new recipe for dinner and enjoyed it. I bought a bag of fresh chopped vegetables from Trader Joe’s which contained snow peas, Napa cabbage, broccoli, and bok choy. I added chopped carrots and bean sprouts. We adapted the recipe shown below to make it easier.
Our adaptations – First of all since we were making this for two people the amount of pasta used was 4oz. In step 1, we used thin spaghetti which we cooked until al dente and then set them aside. In step 2 we doubled the sauce. We eliminated step 3 by using a rotisserie chicken breast which I shredded up and seasoned with garlic powder and ginger powder. Steps 4, 5, and 6 were done as written.
Even though this was not true to the original recipe it turned out quite well. I think we will continue making it, tweaking it each time until we get the right combination of all the ingredients.
Scallops are one of my favorite things to eat. We used to get large ocean scallops from Costco but they have not been for sale for over six months. So we decided to try these smaller scallops also from Costco. Even though John does a super job searing them and not overcooking the scallops, they just are not as good as the previous ones. I think we will have to find a new source and hope that they go on sale occasionally.
Along with our scallops I made steamed new potatoes and broccoli. I squeezed some lemon over everything. It is surprising how lemon and salt on potatoes make them taste so good! All in all this was a pretty nice dinner which would have been spectacular with better scallops.
I probably could eat pasta almost every day of the week. I like it with meat sauces, meatballs, sausage, and all kinds of vegetables. Tonight’s pasta dish was made with fusilli cooked to al dente and then incorporated into a pan full of sautéed mushrooms, onions, and asparagus. I finished off the pasta cooking with about 1 cup of the pasta water, stirring the pasta and vegetables until a kind of thin sauce was created. The addition of olive oil completed the dish. John showered his with parmesan cheese but I decided to keep my dish vegan.
Omnivore 