Tuesday

Cilantro tomato rice (recipe in the comments)
Grape tomatoes, carrots, celery, and yellow squash with sesame dip

Hot tea
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This is from one of our favorite cookbooks that we don't use enough. We love every recipe that we make from it, but somehow they don't rise to the top of our heads very often. We always say we'll remedy this, but somehow we don't. Anyway, we'll try again. This is an unusual dish and may have been our first experience with brown rice. The nutty flavor of the rice really adds something here and would be enjoyed by even your most vigorous whole grain detractors :) I also think this would be very good with frozen microwaved brown rice (Trader Joe's brand or Birds eye), making this a very fast prep dinner. Otherwise, enjoy the time that cooking brown rice gives you to do other things :)

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Easy, but a bit long
Chopping: Tomato, cilantro, garlic, celery, squash
Time: 20 minutes, plus 50 of which is simmering
Make ahead: This is best with hot rice, but it re-heats reasonably for lunch the next day.

Reaction
J: "A true favorite."
M: "A nice hint of summer..."

Thursday

Rice and beans with avocados (recipe in the comments)
Cabbage salad

Hot tea
Chocolate ice cream
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So it was close to 90 today, humid, with the constant threat of thunder storms that never really appeared. In other words, today it was Summer with a capital S. This sort of weather is unusual for Michigan for early June, but nonetheless, we're running with it and having one of our summeriest dinners. This is great because there's minimal cooking (and we tried it with frozen brown rice, so there's even less cooking!), lots of fresh flavors, and it's a great way to serve brown rice to the brown rice wary folk in your life. The new version with microwave rice worked really well, so either way approved by our family!

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Easy
Chopping: Onion, cherry tomatoes, avocado, cabbage
Time: 45 minutes (though most of that is unattended while the rice cooks)
Make ahead: This saves very well, though we don't re-heat, but eat it cold to preserve the raw veggie flavors.

Reaction
J: "Summer, summer, summer!"
M: "Summery, but filling."

Saturday

Mock risotto (recipe in the comments)
Arugula salad with grapefruit

Hot tea
Valentine chocolates (J)
Karmel sutra ice cream (M)
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M and I love risotto, but don't love the attention-intensive time it takes to prepare or the typical load of fat in most recipes. We're always on the lookout for ways to make risotto-like recipes without this major detractors. This is our latest shot, from Eating Well, and it was AMAZING. Such creamy goodness! Such rich flavoring! Such a LONG recipe to make. Sad, but not Eating Well's fault. The original recipe called for Instant brown rice and would have taken about 25 minutes to make total. We couldn't find it at Whole Foods or Trader Joe's and went with normal brown basmati rice, using less rice and more liquid. Thus, the long cooking time. We plan to make this again SOON and go to a normal grocery store and get the faster cooking rice. We hope to replicate our fantastic results and will keep you posted, and will include the faster recipe if it works out. I am also excited because you could very easily use any vegetables you had to change the tenor of the dish, adding them a bit earlier for denser veggies (beets) or later for more tender items (peas, leafy greens). M liked this with just a taste of balsamic drizzled on top (a technique we first enjoyed on our honeymoon, subtitled "M and J eat Italy", over a lovely pumpkin risotto), but J liked it best plain.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Moderate
Chopping: Onion, garlic, pepper, asparagus
Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes or so unattended
Make ahead:

Reaction
J: "Can I die and go straight to risotto heaven????"
M: "Mmmmmmmmmmmm..."