Dinners at home

Following our (pretty expensive) vacation on the west coast, we stuck to home for a few dinners in a row. You know, cooking every day is pretty draining.

It was Sunday, and we went to Whole Foods to buy vegetables for the week. We also picked up this whole branzino, weighing just over a pound.

Sticking with my normal method, I made a tasty salsa verde.

For the potatoes, I parboiled and then roasted them with smashed garlic as the fish cooked. To top it off, chives and parsley from the garden.

Roasted asparagus.

And a salad. I bought spring mix at Whole Foods. I mixed up a buttermilk ranch to last the week. Radishes got sliced up. Pecans, still from McMullan Family Farmers. Dried Cherries. I bought fresh chevre. Black krims from the garden. And topped it all off with minced herbs.

Really delicious.

Night two. Josh defrosted a hanger steak. I wanted something different, so I went with a galbi-type marinade. It ended up really really salty. I should not do this again.

For the salad, the same as the day before, except with a Rogue Creamery blue. We had fresh corn and some cooked corn. I mixed it altogether with some pink lady peas.

We defrosted a Heritage Farms rack of lamb. I chose a Laura Calder recipe. Mix dijon and olive oil and slather on the lamb. Then I took some Italian bread, processed it into breadcrumbs, then added in parmesan cheese, parsley, thyme, and rosemary.

I pressed the mixture onto the lamb and stuck it in the oven.

It came out quite well. But it was really hard to cut because the chine bone wasn't cut.

I ended up having to cut the meat off the bones and then I couldn't chomp on them. Sad.

The lamb was good though, and the breadcrumb/cheese mixture was a nice change though I think I went too heavy on the cheese.

We found an ancient bibb lettuce in the fridge so I used that up in the salad. Same otherwise, though I went with larger chunks of blue. It was tasty, though a little bitter.

For potatoes, I went with the same style roasted potatoes from earlier in the week.

So it was a good week, and nice to have home food, but I was pretty tired.

I do think all the eating out resulted in me wanting to stray from my old stand bys. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not.