Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday dinner (Matt):
Green salad with dill and light dressing. I believe he said this was from the Angelica Kitchen cookbook.
Chickpea and seitan stew over brown basmati rice. This came from a cookbook, too, but I'm not sure which one. Matt is pretty jazzed about the idea of grinding up the seitan in the food processor; he had never done this before, and new worlds are opening up.

Thursday dinner:
Chard, carrot, pattypan squash curry with seitan, served over brown bamati rice. I considered using quinoa, but I really wanted rice. The sauce was coconut-based, and had a tiny bit of turmeric, but was mostly seasoned with fresh shallot, garlic, ginger, jalepeno, then rounded out with torn basil leaves (from the porch) and scallion. Based on a Peter Berley recipe.

I was pleased that I put a dent in our share.

After dinner, we went out to hear some music and have a free salsa lesson. A bit out of character for us, but it was fun. The kids found friends and danced for a couple of hours. We all collapsed on our return home.

String beans and a mixed-grain pilaf

Friday lunch bears mentioning:
It was a simple mixed lettuce-cucumber salad and then Matt made panini with his baked tofu from the other day (recipe from the Angelica Kitchen cookbook), garlicky sauteed kale, and basil-parsley pesto on ciabatta. Even the avowed carnivores in my office came over because it smelled amazing.

Friday dinner:
Pilaf with white basmati, millet, and quinoa (also from the Angelica Kitchen cookbook).
This is one of those where you start it on the stove and finish in the oven. I tended to ignore this idea in the past, partly because I am one of those people who is good with cooking grains on the stove. I never measure, and they pretty much always turn out right. Maybe it is an Indian thing. Lately I have been giving this method a try. The nice thing is that it reduces the number of things cluttering up the stovetop, and the grains do come out beautifully.

String beans and red onions in honey-mustard vinaigrette (a Peter Berley recipe). I have been wanting to make this recipe since I bought that cookbook (The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen) a long time ago, when it first came out. In the headnotes, he says that when he first developed this recipe, he left a plate of these out and when he turned around his young daughter had devoured the whole thing. We had the same experience. We inhaled these. They were so good.

I saved a couple of fistfuls of string beans for my pickle experiment, which has been put off for yet another day.