"Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary"
I'm inhabiting that charming word this week,staying with friends in beautiful Charlotte NC, where I have never met a meal I didn't like. Wait. Let me examine that statement for veracity.....yep. Even the food at the airport is good. Charlotte is a city that tempts you to wander it's busy streets and quiet corners, and order one of everything at every hot dog cart, cafe and restaurant you pass.
I've made a pretty heroic attempt, in visits past, to do just that. And therein lies this week's dilemma.
Do choose the fun behind...
Door A: the fun of cooking with these dear ones all the fun new recipe discoveries of the past months, and repeating the favorites we've shared in the past?
or
Door B: the fun of recreating together some of our favorite Charlotte restaraunt dishes ever? (the eggs benedict at Nolen's! the spinach salad at Flying Biscuit! the collards and fried chicken at King's Kitchen!)
hmm. This week I'm choosing....
We'll start with using up what's on hand, since we're playing too hard to stop for pesky, tedious things like grocery shopping.
Wednesday:Easy Minestrone
well, it's easy minestrone if you start with about 4 cups of leftover red sauce, which we have. Here's a properly written red sauce recipe, the gist of which is
open 3 or 4 large cans of diced, whole or crushed tomatoes
drop in a quartered or roughly chopped onion and
a stick of butter
and if you want to, a cup or two of red wine
let that simmer for about 3 hours, till it's nice and thick.
to the red sauce, we'll be adding some beef broth, green beans, celery, carrots, maybe zucchini...whatever looks yummy.
And, because sometimes the thing that looks like an unnecessary step actually makes a difference, we'll be boiling the pasta separately and adding it to the soup in the bowl, as is my (exasperating?) habit with most pasta bearing soups.
I know. It's extra work, but ooey-gooey mushy pasta can really ick up a bowl of soup. At least for me.
(Stop, voice of mom in my head! I do NOT have a picky appetite! Actual mom, stop laughing!)
Bonus: boiling the pasta separately means we can serve it unpolluted by sauce to the other, er...selective appetite at the table, which happens to belong to a 3 year old.
 |
| yukky food vs yummy food It's an understandable reaction |
yes, I know I just made this last week, but there are chicken breasts in the freezer and a peeled butternut in the fridge, and this is a recipe I really want to demo to these friends. No way we're going to bother with the complicated prep. We'll cut everything into pieces, coat it in the oil and spices and throw it in the oven 45 minutes before dinner. We'll be baking some of the chicken and veg without seasoning for the high chair contingent, and we'll cook up some rice to go with.
Friday: Lamb Ragu and salad with butternut squash
Lamb ragu (or ragout) is a new favorite round here, and if it's food (or people, or books or anything) that my friends like, then I'm eager to be introduced to it.
As a bonus to my fellow word vultures, ragout is an old, old dinner tradition, and its name comes from a French phrase that means 'to restore the appetite'. Knowing that makes me wonder what laboratory conditions we'd have to set up to test the truth of this venerable dish's name. Hmm.....How to kill every one's appetite, and then see if a nice ragout will bring it back to life...hmmm...I'll be thinking about that.
This salad's one I really like, and I'm hoping that it works together with the ragu as nicely as I think it will.
Saturday: Pita pizzas and veggie sticks and popcorn
MOVIE NIGHT!!!! We're going to spread pita bread with the last of the red sauce, and let the children pick their own toppings. (the 3 year old and I may even top one with sprinkles because that would be SO FUNNY!!!!!)
We'll pop them on a baking sheet in a hot (400) oven for about 5 minutes. If you prefer a crispier pizza base, bake them straight on the oven rack, just put a baking sheet on the rack below to keep any dripping cheesy goodness from smoking up the kitchen.
Sunday: tilapia with garlic and lemon and oven fries
This oven fry recipe gets rapturous reviews all over the interweb, and I figure I can pop the fish in the oven for the last 10 minutes that the fries are cooking. I'll be trying to rustle up a green vegetable to go with this, and I'll bake a little extra fish for fish tacos tomorrow night.
I hope that this week you're treated like a friend by the company you keep, even and especially if you find yourself alone in your own company. I hope your days and your meals are full of fun and love and goodness.
And don't overdose on the sprinkles, okay?
It all sounds really good! Hugs to all the NC diners. -- Mr. MenuMuse
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