Bacon Cupcakes Take Over Our Kitchen

Green Salad

Mixed greens, red peppers, flowers and arugula from the garden, and blood orange dressing (five whole small blood oranges, one red onion, red wine and balsamic vinegars, olive oil, salt, and a tiny squirt of mustard, all in the food processor).

Brown Rice

Lentil Salad

3 quarts French Lentils, simmered in 4 quarts water until tender with bay leaves, dried thyme and a couple of onion halves. Lightly caramelized minced onions with a ton of garlic, and roasted carrots added at the last minute. Mustardy dressing (equal parts mustard, red wine vinegar, and olive oil), toasted walnuts, and feta on the side. Next time, either boil the carrots, or start roasting them earlier, and get a soft goat cheese if possible.

Asparagus and Mushrooms

2 ways: steamed asparagus mixed with sauteed mushrooms, and roasted in candied bacon fat. The second preparation was less amazing than I had expected. The first, thanks to Ida, was perfect.

Beets

Scrubbed, chopped, tossed with salt and olive oil, and cooked at about 425 for about an hour and half. This is not my favorite beet preparation, but it is very easy and very good, and complemented the rest of the meal.

Lemon Garlic Tofu

Slices of tofu marinated in lemon juice, olive oil, a lot of garlic, some garden herbs, and a little soy sauce and maple syrup, then baked, swimming in the extra marinade so that they wouldn't dry out. Started at a very high temperature, then down to about 300 degrees once they were browned. These puffed up in a kind of funny way, so I was a bit worried about them when they came out of the oven, but they were great.

Grilled Mahi Mahi

Salt, pepper, lemon, olive oil, and Megan Williams's grilling magic. I don't know exactly what her algorithm for the fish was, but it was very tasty. Some of it was a little overcooked, but this was my fault for insisting on "American done."

Vegan Chocolate Cupcakes

with cream and butter ganache, and maple bacon. I thought that this would be a cute way to make a meaty dessert, and expected them to be no better or worse than unbebaconed cupcakes, but they were amazing. These may be my new dinner party dish: plain vegan cupcakes from the vegan cupcake book with chocolate chips melted into butter and cream, topped with bacon bits made from baked maple coated bacon. Wow. I am not, in general, and oh-my-god-bacon person, but: Wow.

(Note - Tuesday Morning - this would probably have been a better sauce for the fish than the thin aioli that I made with the hand blender, and it uses whole eggs!)

Falafel falafel falafel!

(To the tune of the Mexican Hat Dance)

Okay people, I admit it. I'm getting lazy. This menu is a mostly a repeat. But it's hard to get motivated to try something new when you know that lamby meatballs will be so good.

Green Salad

Greens and mushrooms and red peppers and dressing. Last week's salad was delicious, so I was very happy to find the same veggies in the fridge today. This time it didn't seem quite as good to me, though. This is probably because I was halfway through dinner by the time I managed to dig my salad out. It's really hard to compete with eggplant and lamb and fried onions.

Cauliflower Soup

Roasted cauliflower with onions, turmeric, almonds, and dried apricot. I loved this.

Lentils and Quinoa and Onions

There was a lot of leftover quinoa from last night, so instead of making our own grain, I mixed some of it with lentils and some gorgeous caramelized onions. Unfortunately, this was done early, and I burned the finished dish a bit trying to keep it warm on the stovetop because all of the ovens were occupied. Fortunately, it was mostly salvageable, so we just had less.

Meatballs: lamb and turkey

Baked, with parsley, garden mint, onions, cumin, coriander, and ginger. The recipe from Arabesque also called for fresh cilantro, but I forgot to order any. I don't think that the dish suffered too much. We did 8 lbs of meat: 5 of lamb, 3 of turkey and it was just a little more than we needed. I expected to like the turkey version, because I usually love turkey meat balls, but they were not that good; I think that 6 or 7 lbs of lamb would have been ideal, and that 5 lbs of lamb plus an extra tray of falafel would have been better than doing turkey.

Falafel (falafel, falafel)

Again, baked. So easy now that we have big food processor! (And Ida to do all the boring assembly work!)

Grilled Eggplant

Cut by Ida, grilled outside by Megan W. I would have cooked them a little longer if I was at the grill, but then Megan would have thought that they were overdone. There's just no pleasing the two of us when it comes to vegetables. These were still very good.

Homemade Pita

From The Bread Bible. I multiplied the recipe by five and substituted half whole wheat flour. Four times the recipe would have been enough. The flour substitution was perfect. Really time consuming.

Accompaniments

Raw red cabbage with tomatoes, pickled green cabbage with parsley, shredded cucumbers and garden mint, tahini garlic sauce, pomegranate yogurt sauce. (No hot sauce - ran out of time. Hot sauce would have been good.)

Strawberries and Cream

Whipped by hand by Megan W.

Le Retour

Inspired by the Restaurant des Arcenaulx's

"menu léger" on Holy Saturday in Marseille. And by the contents of our walk-in.

Green Salad

with red peppers, white mushrooms, and blood orange vinaigrette. Simple, but excellent. The dressing was about one to one blood orange juice and olive oil, with one red onion, a tiny bit of mustard, zest from the oranges, and a little salt. This went really well with the veggies that Megan Williams chopped. Plus bacon on the side.

Celery Salad

Celery and carrots, chopped small and mixed with raisins, lemon juice, and yogurt. Tim asked us to use some celery, and this is what we came up with - a hybrid of a couple of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone recipes and Ida's good sense. Much, much better than I expected. I would happily eat this again. Almonds on the side.

Tilapia

à la Meunière et sans farine avec moutarde. The original plan had been to do fish packets with a nicer white fish, but CK shorted us the fish. So we went with tilapia. I thought that the gluten free version was disgusting, but this was a quality of the fish and not the preparation (although, to be fair, maybe I could have done a better job in masking it). The bit I tasted was so awful that I couldn't bring myself to even try the flour and butter one, but I hear that it wasn't nearly as bad. Red pepper white wine sauce on the side.

Tofu

Fairly large chunks, baked in a chaffing dish with red peppers, onions, lemon, and soy sauce. it was in a very hot oven for a very long time, but I kept an eye one it. Not bad. Would have been better cut into smaller pieces and with a lot more vegetables.

Eggs Baked with Mushrooms and Gorgonzola

This wasn't done on time, and then I started talking at dinner and forgot about it, and it got a little over done. The flavors were all exactly right: lightly sauteed onions and mushrooms with just a little garlic, gorgonzola sauce made with milk and butter, salt and pepper on the eggs before going in the over, green onions when they came out. However, next time I would use fewer eggs, so that it will cook more quickly and evenly. This might be better for a dinner party than for the house, and in that case I might just do soft boiled or poached eggs served instead. Extra gorgonzola sauce on the side.

White Beans and Mushrooms

Vegan, lower fat alternative to the above. Unremarkable, but tasty.

Quinoa

Sweet Potatoes

I heart sweet potatoes.

Asparagus

Steamed. Plain, not overdone, for Megan. I heart these, too.

Strawberry Rhubarb Cobbler with Blood Orange

Megan did this, and it was very, very, very good. This recipe, with a little less crumble and a lot less sugar. I picked up some heavy cream to have whipped cream on the side, but forgot all about it.