Thursday

Tuna in red curry sauce (Trader Joe's)
Basmati rice
Steamed snow peas in teriyaki

Shortbread cookies dipped in dark chocolate
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You all know that we don't eat a lot of prepared food, but every once in a while there's an occasion that warrants it. M had a dinner meeting tonight that we didn't know about when we made our grocery list. That left me to either make one of the meals planned to feed both of us or come up with something else. I decided tonight was ripe for one of my favorite convenience products - Trader Joe's line of tuna in curry sauces. This is a pouch with fillets of tuna in yummy, yummy curry. It comes in red, green, and yellow with potatoes and onions. I usually get the red because it's the spiciest and has the least sodium - 380 mg per serving (really quite reasonable for a prepared food). Anyway mixed with some hot rice this is an amazing dinner. I microwaved some snow peas and was good to go.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Ridiculously easy
Chopping: I did stem the snow peas, but that's totally optional
Time: 20 minutes (only that long to make the rice)
Make ahead: Sure, just re-microwave to warm.

Reaction
J: "Sometimes we all need to find dinner in a little pouch."
M: Didn't get to have one :)

While this certainly isn't a blog devoted to parenting or even the feeding of kids, T's presence in our lives has been noted many times. Our 17 month old colors all aspects of our lives and for the most part makes them much more joyous. Who could be sad with such an amazing and adventurous eater?

One of the downsides of parenting though is the sudden plethora of colds that traipse into our house and take root. This has been brutal this fall as T is associating with more of his own kind while we are out and about. I feel especially bad for him (though both M and I have had our fair share of colds this fall) because there's so little we can do to help him. As any news-watcher is aware, cold medications aren't recommended for kids under 6 anymore. We are blessed that our pediatricians got this word before the official recall of such drugs and so we didn't give them to T. That said, saline nose drops, baby Vicks, and a humidifier are a lot less powerful than a big dose of Sudafed. Well, folk cures are back in business in this new climate and apparently Gramma wins again with the old honey-before-bed advice. It works!

The article makes this point, but I would like to reiterate that you should NOT give honey to kids under age 1 due to the (admittedly unlikely, but still present) risk of botulism.

At any rate, dose away with no fear. Your kids will like it (hey, I might like it for me!) and there are no bad side effects! I love food, don't you?

Wednesday

Pasta Amatriciana (recipe in the comments)
Mixed greens and shredded carrot salad with bacon balsamic dressing

A few spice drops
Gingerbread spice tea
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This is one of those dinners that the recipe we started with bears no resemblance to what we ended up with except the name is similar. We started with a recipe for Perciatelli all'Amatriciana from a Weight Watchers Simply the Best Italian cookbook and, as is so often the case with "diet" cookbooks, had to increase both portion size and calories. That said, we have ended up with a very healthy and very tasty outcome. This is one of our "meat as condiment" recipes, where just a bit of meat changes the character and the taste in dramatic ways.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Easy
Chopping: Onion, garlic
Time: 35 minutes
Make ahead: Make the sauce and toss with fresh pasta.

Reaction
J: "Pasta is the best food on earth."
M: "Excellent when you make it our way."

Tuesday - Celebratory dinner out (spur of the moment!) at Zingerman's Roadhouse

Apilachicola oysters (M)
Arugula and red oak leaf salad with roasted beets and goat cheese (J)

Aged top serloin, mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach (M)
Beef brisket, creamed corn, Southern-style greens (J)

Fresh apple fritter with cinnamon gelato
Poundcake with cranberry compote and paw paw gelato
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Today we were planning to have a regular dinner at home, but mid-day M got the call inviting him to interview for a tenure-track job. This is the first such call he's received, and I decided to try to get a babysitter (success!) and go out to celebrate. We hemmed and hawed about where to go and decided that, while not the fanciest, the Roadhouse is one of the most festive places we could go. It lived up to expectations and dinner was FANTASTIC. If you're in the area and you haven't been, go soon.

Reaction
J: "So this is American cuisine."
M: "A hell of a neighborhood restaurant."

Monday

Lamb rogan josh (recipe in the comments)
Rice
Savory Indian cauliflower and peas

Jasmine tea
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As you may have noticed, M and I love Indian food and we cook a lot of it. That said, we make very little Indian that's not vegetarian. Well, we've been hanging onto a lamb rogan josh recipe for a while now and decided to give it a go. I should preface this by saying that we LOVE lamb rogan josh at our favorite Indian restaurants, so we were pretty excited. Well, following the actual recipe was a disaster - the meat didn't get tender enough and despite adding lots of extra liquid there was no sauce left after it was done simmering. Added to that, it cooks for two hours, which you have to plan for after you've been organized enough to make the spice rub and get it on the lamb the night before you cook. I don't have that kind of time.

We salvaged the dish by adding tomatoes (oddly missing from the original recipe, which had our spide-y sense going off, but we followed the directions anyway) and simmering for an additional hour. Luckily, I was home today and so the original two hours of cooking were done before M got home to assess the situation, leaving us more than an hour before dinner. Otherwise, pizza here we come.

In the end, this was a good dinner (especially the cauliflower and peas, also a new and MUCH more successful recipe), but not worth the effort. That said, we think we can salvage it by converting to a crock pot recipe. The crock pot is one of my favorite appliances and maybe it can breathe new life into this lamb. Our first stab at the crock pot version is what I've posted, so remember that we haven't tested it yet. It's just our first guess. Stay tuned and I'll let you know how it goes.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Easy to make, ridiculously long to cook
Chopping: Lamb, garlic, cauliflower
Time: 20 minutes to prep + 10 minutes to start cooking (the next day) + 3 hours to simmer
Make ahead: I certainly hope so.

Reaction
J: "I have faith in my crock pot."
M: "Tomatoes can fix anything."

Sunday - Holiday party with MOMS Club

Party food
Brownie Bourbon Balls (Our contribution to the affair)
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Tonight was T's first Christmas party. He's 17 months old and found the holiday hub-bub a bit overwhelming at first, but after a good dinner of party food, he was ready to roam around shrieking with the best of them. It is a minor miracle to watch him generally and watching him stride off into a room full of people he barely knows is a joy to behold.

We made an easy Brownie Bourbon Ball recipe that turned out to be about as good as it was hard to make them - not very. I am still questing for a signature dessert that is 1) Easy to prepare, 2) Festive, 3) Fail proof, and 4) Fabulous for the holidays. Ideas?

Note: M ate the one remaining ball once we got home and decided that they were pretty good, and could be excellent if the brownies were cakier (we'll add an egg).

Reaction
J: "Not worth it."
M: "Too fudgy -- worth another shot???"

Saturday

Grandma's savory tofu casserole AKA tofu loaf (recipe in the comments)
Ketchup and mustard for drizzling on the casserole (Trust me)
Mashed potatoes
Butter lettuce salad with garlic vinaigrette

Mint M & Ms (Habit solidly forming)
Gingerbread spice tea
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This was our conversion to tofu recipe. We had this as a birthday celebration dinner at our friend F's house. It was for her birthday, but we got the best present - this recipe and the beginning of our quest for more tofu in our lives. The only downside was the name: tofu loaf, which is neither the most appetizing, nor, honestly, the most accurate name. This does resemble your typical meatloaf, but it's so much more (and we make a VERY good meatloaf). Especially as we like to make it in a square baking dish, I like to think of this as Grandma's Savory Tofu Casserole. No, there's no actual Grandma involved, but putting one in the title evokes that homey quality this recipe embodies. It will convert even the biggest tofu-phobe. We like this best with baked potatoes (bake right along with the casserole), but had to have mashed potatoes this time as we went without on Thanksgiving. The casserole is dense, so a light salad is an excellent side.

We got our Christmas tree today and so I had no compunction about breaking out my holiday herbal tea. Gingerbread spice with sugar and milk is a good thing.

Prep Notes
Difficulty: Moderate to prepare and long to cook, but totally worth it
Chopping: Onion, carrot, pepper, garlic
Time: 25 minutes to prep + 1 hour to bake
Make ahead: No problem.

Reaction
J: "A conversion experience all over again."
M: "Just like Mom used to make. If Mom was a vegetarian who liked ketchup."