Splendid Table

This week's Splendid Table on NPR was a repeat of a previous show, but since Orlando's 90.7 just recently began to play the show, I happily listen to reruns because they're new to me. This time, two big vegetarian ideas: Watching your "cookprint," which is the footprint you leave when you cook. And cold soups, which are most often vegetarian. I encourage you to listen to the show, in part or in full, at Splendid Table.org.

You might call this a replay, but it didn't matter because it went over so well. I made kabobs alternating in new particular order carrot slices, sweet potato slices, Redi-Burger chunks, sweet pepper slices, and chunks of onion. It is recommended to pre-cook the carrots and sweet potatoes. Grilled would have been much more fun, but I was running out of time. Instead, I brushed the kabobs with oil and broiled them. Hence the crisped skewers.

For the Warm Tomato Vinaigrette, I used up the last of the fancy balsamic vinegar on the last go around. This time I used white balsamic instead. Also, this time I chose to use the onion chives out of our herb garden instead of Vidalia onion.

Paul grumbled a bit that I didn't have the other balasmic vinegar, but he couldn't deny that the sauce was again a great success. I still recommend it.

Perhaps I should have tried the Warm Tomato Vinaigrette recipe from Ratio before recommending it to you. However, you would have done well to try it before I got to it. Talk about amazing. Paul was just thrilled. Of course, he claimed what made it good was the fact that I used what I had on hand, which was a very nice (and apparently very expensive) balsamic vinegar that was gifted to us. I also used Vidalia onions instead of scallions. I'm sure there would have been an improvement with the scallions, but this dressing/sauce/gravy was so good, I'm not so sure it mattered.

I served this dressing over sweet/white mashed potatoes and a vegan veggie-meat called Redi-Burger, which tends to have a strong flavor. I'm not a fan of it at all, but Paul likes it a lot. This dressing certainly made the meat more appropriate as an entree.

Clearly this recipe has tons of uses. I encourage you to find your own and come back and share the recommendation with us.

These were the deviled eggs I made to be the protein with our leftover salad pieces last week. You can see a much more detailed story with cost to make from the first time I made these using The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper on this previous post. Although, I should point out this salad also had carrots, bell peper, and cucumber. Obviously, if you find these foods on sale, it's still a great price for a fancy salad.

Yesterday, I served the leftover eggs cold with a variety of sauteed vegetables over baked potatoes. I was a little nervous that they wouldn't be good cold, but they actually tasted quite good--possibly even not as strong in garlic and onion flavor.

This may be the last time I make these eggs because I haven't figured out what to do with the leftover stuffing. We weren't particularly fond of turning the stuffing into the salad dressing. We would have been much happier either just sprinkling the stuffing over the salad as well or using it to make an egg salad sandwich for lunch the next day. I guess we'll wait and see. Still, it made a pretty addition to what otherwise would have looked and tasted like a traditional and rather boring salad (if you traditionally find salads boring, that is).

Cost Per Person $1.25