Whenever I ask John what he would like as a vegetarian entree he always says Chana dal. I often try to steer him in a different direction but today I caved so Chana dal it is. While I like Chana dal it is really not a hot weather dish.
Chana dal are dried split chickpeas in a spicy sauce which is served over rice or kale. Since it is going to be “damn hot” today I get up early and get it into the Instant Pot where it cooks under pressure for 18 minutes. Later I am definitely glad that I made dinner in the morning and all we have to do is heat it it in the microwave.
Our grilled steak was a little rarer than usual but still tasted great. The broccoli also spent some time on the grill after I had parcooked it in the microwave. Since we were trying not to heat up the kitchen I made some convenience mashed potatoes.
Our menu called for eggs tonight but I was just not feeling it. We really enjoyed our steak dinner.
Not much to say about this lazy dinner. Frozen chicken wings and a packaged salad. I always take the flats since they are my favorite parts. It works well since John likes the drumettes. Foster Farms Take Out brand has been reliably good. Buying the large package at Costco is much more economical than the smaller bags at the grocery store.
Easy dinner using Foster Farms frozen Buffalo chicken wings and Taylor Farms Mediterranean salad. More economic than going out for a similar dinner or getting take-out. Sometimes the cook needs a breather!
We have not made this dish in quite a while. It’s not really a summer dinner entree but we had a turkey sausage that needed using so we went ahead. At least we did not need to turn the oven on!
This is one of our concoctions that we do not have a recipe for. What’s in it depends on what is in the fridge. For this rendition we used onion, garlic, fennel, carrots, and celery. Usually we put cremini mushrooms in the stew but they were so old and shriveled that I just threw them out. We made a double batch so that there would be plenty left over for lunches.
We started out by sautéing half of the turkey sausage in some olive oil. We save the other half for adding towards the end of cooking so its flavor will not get cooked out. In the grease from the sausage we sweat all the vegetables. Then we added 4 cups of stock and 2 cups of lentils. We cooked this for an hour and a half adding some water when it started looking too dry.
It was so delicious! The carrot added a lovely sweetness to the earthy lentils and salty sausage. We did not have as much left over for lunches as I had anticipated because it was just not possible to deny ourselves a second bowl!
I love strand pasta. John is more of a “shapes” man. So we always have a pasta debate before making dinner. I think that smooth sauces should get strands and piece-y sauces should get shapes. My argument won the day so we ended up making spaghetti. Yay!
The arrabbiata sauce is spicy. Along with crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, garlic, bell pepper, and poblano chile I added a teaspoon of red pepper flakes, 2 large squirts of sriracha, and 5 shakes of Tabasco. I made the sauce on Tuesday morning so it had two days to improve. It was really tasty and not as spicy as you might imagine.
To round out our dinner I assembled a packaged Buffalo flavored salad. That’s chicken wing Buffalo dressing not some odd bovine flavored sauce!
Roasted tilapia, homegrown pesto, rice, and asparagus
We have cubes of pesto in the freezer that we made over the last couple of growing seasons. This particular pesto is a basil, almond, garlic, olive oil, parmesan combination. Pesto can be made with basil, parsley, even oregano and you can chose the nuts you like best. Pine nuts are quite expensive so we opted for almonds.
In a small garden patch on our patio are, from the left, parsley, oregano, thyme, purslane, chives, more oregano and a couple of cherry tomato plants.
The tilapia roasts in a 400F oven for 10 to 12 minutes depending on the thickness. When it was done it got a good smear of the pesto. Even though the pesto had darkened from its original bright green it still tasted delicious.
Rounding out the dinner was a portion of rice and quite a few spears of asparagus. The pesto tasted good on them too!
On Tuesday John took our cast iron grill and heated it up on our gas grill. When it was piping hot he took balls of seasoned ground beef and put them on the grill. Then he squished the balls of ground beef until they were thin-ish. These smashburgers cooked briefly on the grill. The idea is to get the outside and edges crispy.
In the meantime I sautéed some onions and made a Caesar salad. I added a handful of kale to the salad greens so that the salad would have some heft.
So what was the verdict on the smashburgers? All three of us voted for John’s traditional thicker medium rare burgers. They are much juicier. And as much as I liked the sautéed onions I like the bite of the raw ones better. Next time we have hamburgers (Fourth of July) we will go back to our favorites, or as the grandkids call them, Zaydeburgers.
Sliced rotisserie chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes, and broccoli
It was actually much hotter than 92F on Monday. I think it hit 100F again. Ugh, summer, my least favorite season of the year.
This is the second dinner from our rotisserie chicken and we have also had one lunch for the three of us. It’s such a bargain! In order not to heat up the kitchen too much I used dehydrated potato flakes for the mashed potatoes. I cooked the broccoli on the stove.
Tomorrow John is making smash burgers on the grill and I am in charge of a salad. Finally on Wednesday the heat is breaking and we have a few days to cook what we want in the kitchen!
Omnivore 