While I wait for my Paris vacation pictures to upload on facebook (only two weeks after they were taken! yeesh) and for Claire and her boyfriend, Jean-Marie, to wake up, I might as well see if I can knock out the promised food blog. I'm actually a bit annoyed with myself for having woken up so early... we were out til 2:00am and I still couldn't sleep past 9:00. Thanks, Feurs, for conditioning me to go to sleep early and wake up early since there's nothing to do past 7:00pm :P But this weekend's antics will have to wait for a later entry.
First up: Wednesday night's pre-race blend of squash and asparagus ravioli in a mushroom pesto sauce, accompanied by sliced tomatoes and avocados.
To be honest, this meal consisted more of assembling and warming ingredients than actual cooking, but it still turned out well! (confession: the pesto did come from a jar...) I bought the ravioli at the farmer's market the day before, and although the shopkeeper recommended adding the asparagus ravioli to the squash ravioli (which he was almost out of), I think it was too much of a difference in taste for the two raviolis to really blend well. Individually, though, they were both delicious!
I got the idea for the sliced tomato/avocado salad from Fran, though a bit of lemon juice on top didn't quite equal the yummy herbed mayo she made. I did the best I could with neither fresh herbs nor mayo!
Thursday's dinner required a bit more creativity. I've been craving Chinese food, and an ample amount of rice and sautée-able vegetables put the idea of fried rice in my head. But having become somewhat of a vegetarian-by-default (at least when it comes to cooking at home), adding some protein seemed like a prudent idea. I spotted a box of quinoa in the pantry and was pleased to see that the cook times for jasmine rice and quinoa are similar enough that they could be cooked together, since I wasn't feeling ballsy enough to go all in for fried quinoa.
I made the rice/quinoa blend and chopped up an onion, some carrots and mushrooms, fried a couple eggs, then stir-fried the veggies before adding in the already-warm rice to fry. I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, and lacking soy sauce I substituted lemon juice, salt, pepper, and paprika, with no real expectation of how well it would turn out.
The result: it was surprisingly good! The lemon juice latched on to the carrots, which made for an unusual (although quite tasty) flavor, and the jasmine rice and quinoa blended very nicely. I wish I'd had some snow peas or other green vegetable to throw in, but what the dish may have lacked in color it more than compensated for in taste.
I also made a salad that Fanny introduced me to that consists of chopped oranges and endives as well as raisins and walnuts. The bitterness of the endives took a little getting used to at first, but now I really like this salad and we usually have it a couple times a week. I also had an avocado with lemon juice, since it was perfectly ripe and added a bit of color to the plate. Definitely a meal I'll have to repeat and refine!
Continuing with the food theme, I'm going to get going since it's lunchtime here!
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