Plans for dinner

R and I are going to the theater tonight (a musical, but if I told you which one you might try to search and figure out where I live!). We live only a few minutes away so we have decided to do dinner at home and then head straight there.

As much as I knew I'd regret it, I decided to go to my favorite grocery store instead of the one near my house. I hate shopping there on the weekends because the suburbanites invade it, parking is crazy and people just stand in the produce department in amazement and block my path!

We had steak at our friends' house last night, and R was fed a hamburger at the Habitat site, so I decided to buy some wild coho salmon. I picked up some broccoli and was thinking I'd do something with the sweet potatoes I have (maybe some sort of souffle with jalapeños and shallots), but then I remembered we have leftover soup. I'm now thinking I may make some rice with the jalapeños and shallots, stuff the salmon with that and roast the fillets along with the broccoli. I can make the rice ahead of time and stuff them, and just throw them in the oven when we're ready to eat.

I also bought some crystallized ginger. If I don't eat it all as a snack, there is a gingersnap recipe floating around out there somewhere that I may try to make tomorrow. The freezer bag of chewy cherry oatmeal cookies I made two weekends ago is almost empty, and someone gets a little cranky when he's out of cookies...

Update:

We are back from the show. R is upstairs making white russians. I wanted to add a picture of dinner:

Coho Salmon stuffed with pineapple-jalapeño basmati rice



I sauteed a shallot and a jalapeño in a tsp each of butter and olive oil, then sauteed the rice (1/2 cup for 2 servings) in that for a bit. I didn't want to use just water, and we didn't have chicken broth in anything smaller than quart-sized packages, but I spotted several little cans of pineapple juice in the pantry. I figured that would work nicely with the jalapeno.

I made pockets in the fillets and stuffed them, baking them at 400 until the fish was done and roasting some broccoli on the side and finished it off with a bit of cilantro (it definitely need it for color).

Dinner!

Something other than pizza

For years before we were married, R's standard Sunday night dinner was Pizza. He would then eat leftover pizza Monday night and Tuesday night. Wednesday and Thursday were probably sandwiches, and on the weekends he'd go out.

These days we do still eat pizza, but not every Sunday night as his cholesterol is a bit high. (And I don't want to gain "married weight"!) We have a great place around the corner and it is always tempting to call and pick up, but I decided to cook.

We'd spent much of the afternoon running around looking for a lamp. We still have quite a few gift cards from the wedding, but after running from one end of the mall to another and back, along with stops at Crate & Barrel, Pier One, and Bombay, we came home with only the serving utensils to our stainless and a silicon pastry mat (for me, of course).

Dinner was a typical "clean out the pantry/fridge" concotion: a baked pasta dish with turkey, butternut squash, and some homemade tomato sauce that was in the freezer:


It looks like a ton, but that's a small casserole dish.

Tonight, I joined just about everyone here in town and made soup. I'm sure there was plenty of chili to be had, but I decided on Pasta e Fagioli. I didn't manage to take any pictures, but I filled up a 5 1/2 quart pot. Plenty for tonight and plenty more in the freezer.

As much as I despise her more than any other food network "personality," I used a recipe from Rachel Ray. I have never bought her cookbooks, but I have a copy in my MasterCook software. I used some smoked sausage (R needs meat) instead of pancetta, used a little more tomato than it called for, and let it simmer a lot longer. It was tasty, and was nice on this evening that finally feels like Fall.