This is such a well-timed entry, since, by happy accident, I have a vegetarian in the house right now : my younger sister. Also in the house is my younger brother, and the two have, it seems to me, mutually exclusive tastes in dinner food. What an exciting challenge!
I probably shouldn’t have made my first menu so restaurant heavy, since it’s not how we usually eat. But let’s start with the exception, and then we’ll get to the rule.
Sunday: Homemade-ish pizza, salad
Monday: George’s Greek Cafe
Tuesday: Macaroni and cheese, salad
Wednesday: Leftover mac and cheese, salad (I’m sensing a trend.)
Thursday: Grilled stuffed portobello mushrooms, grilled zucchini
Friday: Super Mex take-out
Saturday: Up for grabs! By which I mean, I don’t know.
Notes on the week:
Sunday
Pizza dough and sauce were both from Trader Joe’s, which was miles easier than starting from scratch. We made three pizzas; this took considerable oven/rack coordination but yielded enough for five, with some leftovers. Terrified of a soggy crust (manifestation of general yeast-phobia), I used just a little smear of sauce, and this meagerness did not go unnoticed by my dining companions. Since the bottom crust was not lacking for crunch, next time I might (might) use more than a spoonful.
You don’t actually need any special equipment for pizza. If you’ll forgive my going all Alton-Brown-minimalist, the oiled back of a baking pan works fine. But special pizza equipment is just the best. I will mention that my boyfriend (who would probably prefer not to be mentioned) got me a pizza peel and stone a little while back; both were used with great success, particularly the peel, which gets bonus points for its unheard-of level of dough transfer accuracy and overall awesomeness.
Monday
Half-price wine night! Forgot to bring home the second half of the second bottle, not so surprisingly. The surprising part, really, is that the bottle was not finished.
Tuesday
My macaroni and cheese comes from a Martha Stewart recipe and includes tomatoes, which means tipping a few cupfuls of the plain mixture into a small baking dish for my brother, adding tomatoes to the pot of remaining mac and cheese, and then dumping all this into the larger, rest-of-the-family dish. I won’t lie: it’s a pain. I could be mean and make my brother pick around the tomatoes, but this is a concession I’ll make, if only to remind him of all my extra effort (failing to acknowledge that guilt is not his main source of motivation, as it is mine).
As an aside, I forgot to remove the pizza stone from the oven on Monday, so it was preheated to lava-hot by the time the mac and cheese needed to bake. Quick thinking girls that we are, my sister and I grabbed the oven mitts, extracted the stone, and whisked it outside to cool on the barbeque. And there it remains, possibly safe to touch by now.
Today
It feels abrupt to stop here without an analysis of the grilled portobellos, but we’ll save that for when Cook’s Illustrated comes calling. (Any day now!) I’ve made them more than a few times, to glowing-ish reviews; they have enough butter, parmesan, and breadcrumbs to keep even the mushroom-shy fairly happy. No one ever said vegetarian cooking had to be healthy!
After work: remove pizza stone from grill
My sister enjoys posing clipping rosemary in the garden.
I would be careful about that Alton Brown; I once saw that man throw a laundry bag of Kale (filled with, not made of) into his washing machine because “who needs a fancy Salad Spinner when you’ve got washing machine with a spin cycle”?
Also, nice pictures.
Oh man, my friend Courtney made those stuffed mushrooms once for me. They’re to die for.