Eat Like a Rabbit

Sometimes, it's really hard to think of dinner. Sometimes, it's even harder to think of an entire week's worth of dinners! This is what happened yesterday. I had a lot going on. We had salad for lunch and leftovers and peanut butter and honey for dinner. (Hey, it's what the baby wanted!) However, today my mind got back on track surprisingly quickly as it all came to me while I was at work, and I actually have a meal plan for the week that isn't 100% salad and ice cream.

Dinner Menu for October 12

• Tonight we had the butternut squash pasta bake/lasagna that I took from last year's post and tweaked. I'll have an alternate recipe up as soon as Paul edits the pictures. There's still enough left for another night.
• Butternut squash soup--again trying to perfect a recipe, but suddenly we're in record highs of 90's! May have to come up with an alternative.
• Dilled roasted potatoes and green beans maybe cornbread, too. (High in iron.)
• Salad (just in case the baby rabbit doesn't want anything else as has happened of late.)
• Burritos

We have some great-looking fruit that my be a night's meal with peanut butter and honey toast or cereal or maybe just for desert.

When Publix had a 50% off sale on Bird's Eye products, I picked up as many items as looked good. The bag of white and green beans with baby carrots looked different, and I took picked one up. I very rarely make the recipes on the back of a package, but I had some bean sprouts that needed to be used up and the recipe on the back for a been salad with the Bird's Eye bag and some bean sprouts sounded good and easy. The recipe called for the beans to be cooked, diced onions to be added in, and for the mix to be topped with a honey mustard salad dressing, which I had to make from scratch because I never by such a variety. Perhaps the dressing was the sour note, perhaps it was the quality of the vegetables. Either way, it was a bad move. And the leftovers the next day were even worse. (See, I don't like to waste food, and I don't believe in sending Paul leftovers that weren't good int he first place. I brought the leftovers myself and through half of them out.) Needless to say, I won't be reading recipes on the back of bags any more, and the other half of the bag of beans is still in the freezer.

VegCooking has a great selection of vegan recipes with fabulous photographs to make you want to try every recipe they throw at you. The recipes are categorized by I love the thought of adding cranberries to green beans. I found it ironic that the side dish was recommended to go with hazelnut and rosemary encrusted seitan, which was the entree that sounded the most tempting to me.

When I was little, we were a family of habits. Every Christmas Eve we had dinner at Don's Seafood in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, followed by presents with everyone under the tree at my grandparents. The next morning were presents at our own homes, and back to Mawmaw and Pawpaw's for dinner, football, and time around the billiard table. Now, Christmas's are celebrated in Florida. Sometimes at Disney, sometimes volunteering somewhere. We are no longer driven by our habits, but by our memories of the years we had together.

PF Chang's, namely this location, is where Paul and I had our first date. That being said, it's kinda special to us. I can even remember what we ate that night. However, we have since been educated about excellent choices at the restaurant and generally select other items. Firstly, the broccoli and tofu in a chili sauce is generally one of the preferred dishes because I am a sucker for broccoli.

When Paul and I got married, there were some big discussions about corn bread. There is a variety of cornbread flavors, recipes, and activities for after the cornbread. There is sweet cornbread (which my husband calls Yankee cornbread), salty cornbread, corn scones (a Moosewood Restaurant recipe), corn in the cornbread (a Boston Market recipe), and cornbread dressing (my mother's recipe).

Sorry, we were too excited and hungry to take a picture of this one.

I chose the easiest recipe I could find for Tempura on foodnetwork.tv. I battered frozen green beans, fresh julienned carrots, fresh eggplant, and frozen broccoli. Obviously, I defrosted the frozen veggies slightly. I used the sauce from Moosewood Restaurant's Pad Thai recipe and served it with brown rice.

The result of the first concoction was so delicious, I was afraid it was a mistake. For my parents, I made the recipe again replacing the green beans and eggplant with zucchini and onion rings. The result was the same. However, my mother did turn up her nose when she saw me mixing the sauce. Upon trying it with the meal, she decided it was good.