Big Monkey and I agreed that Monday nights would be our official "date night." Fridays we're always working and we don't want to fight the crowds on Saturdays (not to mention the struggle to find a sitter!). We're almost always off on Monday nights, restaurants and movie theaters are relatively quiet, and family members are usually available to watch Lil Bit. The plan has worked out well but now that we've hit the lean days of summer, we won't be going out on dates much. Rather, we'll stay in, cook up something yummy on the grill, rent a movie, and kick back with a local ale.
For a while now, on the Mondays we didn't have a sitter or whatever and wound up at home, I've been working through my stack of Martha Stewart Living recipes. Not the cookbook (although I use it a lot) and not the Everyday Food ones but the ones that come on the tear out cards towards the back of the magazine. I've been collecting them for nine or ten years now, off and on, and have a 3-ring binder full. Some have turned out better than others but all have thrust me outside of my cooking comfort zone and let us eat something different. This week was (top photo) grilled goat with grilled peppers and onions. The whole dinner (each tear out page is four recipes: an appetizer, main course, side, and dessert) also included eggplant fritters, which I didn't cook cause we do not like eggplant, and a lemon-yogurt sauce, which I didn't fix cause I didn't realize before starting that the yogurt in the fridge had gone bad. But everything was still pretty yummy, even if I like my peppers and onions a little softer than the time alotted in the recipe had them. Dessert (bottom photo) was a plum-raspberry-tarragon chilled soup, minus the tarragon (cause my herb guy at the farmer's market didn't have any). Again, outside of my cooking comfort zone, on a couple of levels, and it was okay, but we both agreed it would be better as a granita or sorbet, and needed more sweet to cut the tart of the raspberries. Live and learn.
Today's harvest: (t to b) mixed chard, cilantro, green beans, loose leaf lettuce. Green green and more green.
Love the blog! Yay to you :)
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