Week Seven

Monday: left overs!

Tuesday: Lentil soup. I made a big pot of lentil soup. Lentils are hard to screw up but I have a particular lentil soup flavor that I favor. First I cooked garlic, onion, celery and carrot. Then I added the lentils and let them cook in the vegetables and oil. Next I added a generous amount of red wine and let that cook. I added some chopped tomatoes-canned or fresh depending on the time of year, and let that cook until it seemed time to add water. I added about twice as much water as there was lentils. Next I added a heaping amount of red pepper flakes, coriander seed, a large amount of cumin, garlic salt, salt, pepper and just a few rubs of nutmeg. Then I let it cook and added any additional spices at the end after it cooks. It is delicious and has a nice middle eastern flavor. We like to eat it as soup, with hummus in a wrap, on rice...lots of options!


Wednesday: Shake and Bake and I helped. I had a craving. Lucas had shake and bake eggplant, which he thoroughly enjoyed, and I had chicken. It absolutely met the need.


Thursday: GARDEN BURGERS! There are two types of garden burgers we advocate for in this house (other than home made): Dr. Praeger, and Gardenburger-Sun Dried Tomato. We love to doctor them up with toasted Kaiser rolls, all the yummy fixin's and pickle. On this night we also had homemade hash-browns and salad. A perfect dinner.


Friday: Today was Charlotte's first train ride. We rode the train to Oregon City to pay a visit to the fam. We had a meat and potato kind of night and that was perfect for me as potato is one of the few foods most delighting me right now. The baked potato was warm and extra tasty. Nice to have something I can depend on.


Saturday: Yarn Crawler's chicken. It's a traditional dish, as of this Saturday. Mom, Sarah, and I participated, partly, in Portland's City wide yarn crawl. We had a great time visiting some yarn shops, some more yarny than others, and making some additional stops for lunch and book buying at Powells. Upon our arrival home we were exhausted and in definite need of nourishment, well that isn't technically true given that we were actually stuffed on Coney Island milk shakes (big yum!). All that said, mom made some tasty baked chicken with rice, asparagus, and salad. My favorite was the rice. This is a rice dish that I always love and highly recommend. It is white rice, beef consomme soup, french onion soup and mushroom all baked together.


Sunday: Andy turned 22 last week! That is so old. We play a game in Charlottesville that whenever someone has a birthday you go around the table and share what happened when you were that age (whatever the age is). It turns out that 22 was a very big year for everyone and I am sure it will be for Andy also. To celebrate we had spaghetti and salad, It was all very warm and comfort food-y. The salad was the most exceptional part: spinach, cabbage, artichoke hearts, and carrot with a simple oil and vinegar dressing. Very nice. Happy Birthday Andy!