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.