What did you eat today?
Breakfast: Grapenuts with cranberry juice
Lunch: Don’t recall, actually
Dinner: Ate at Elevation 66, a nearby brewpub. The food here is really good. We shared the flatiron steak and a salad. Also tried the burger and the Mac & Cheese. The Mac, was good, although the noodles were a little overcooked. The beer was tasty, too. Only downside is that this place can be really noisy.
Dessert: Apple pie. Eliza announced she wanted to make one this morning.
Breakfast (I): Grapenuts with cranberry juice.
Breakfast (II): A cold doughnut from Doughnut Dolly. I don’t really know how this happened, I just walked into work and said “Here” and handed me a soft little white bag. Normally, of course, leftover doughnuts are just lame, but Doughnut Dolly are such great pastries that they don’t turn into a rigid mess after a day.
Lunch: Turkey sandwich.
Afternoon snack: Just a couple of Hershy’s kisses. And maybe a York or two. Coke Zero.
Dinner: A delicious spaghetti bolognaise that Suzanne invented. Really sweet with lots of carrots along with the beef and sausage.
Dessert: Leftover homemade vanilla ice cream. With some hot fudge. Um… after the kids went to bed because there really wasn’t enough for more than two servings. I feel slightly guilty about this.
Breakfast: Shredded Wheat and grapefruit juice.
Morning snack: Yogurt and raspberries.
Lunch: Leftover Zachary’s Pizza.
Afternoon snack: Apple. Girl scout cookies.
Dinner: It’s still super hot. Fortunately grilling brie-stuffed burgers and corn on the cob keeps the kitchen cool. Moose even cooked the bacon that topped our burgers on the grill.
I’m kind of obsessed with stuffed burgers. Mostly, it’s because I like to taste the cheese and most kinds just slide off the patty if they’re on top. Usually I put gorgonzolla in, but we were all out. There was a decent hunk of brie in the fridge, so I decided to give it a shot. It was a great flavor, and the texture actually worked out better than with blue cheese that is clumpy. There were lots of good, cheesy bites.
Dessert: Homemade vanilla ice cream from Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipes. This is an OK vanilla ice cream, but far from my favorite… like many with a custard base, I just find this one too eggy-tasting. I’ve tried a couple of Philadelphia-style recipes with no egg, but they are usually kind of icy. Still looking for the ideal. There’s also the problem of knowing when to stop churning. I usually overdo it, and end up with a hint of butter flavor. Next time, set an alarm for 18-20 minutes and pull it off to harden.
Breakfast: Shredded Wheat and grapefruit juice.
Morning snack: I couldn’t wait for lunch, so I had some leftover Zachary’s Pizza at about 10:30. Let’s call it second breakfast.
Lunch: More leftover Zachary’s Pizza. I could eat it three meals a day.
Afternoon snack: An entire box of popsicles. It was really hot. Did I mention that I shared it with my kids?
Dinner: Way too hot to cook. Turned leftover filling from our southwestern steak tacos with chopped charred summer vegetables into taco salad.
Breakfast: Grapenuts with cranberry juice
Lunch: Leftover Zachary’s Pizza. I seriously can’t decide whether it is better warm or cold. What do you think?
Dinner: Southwestern steak tacos with chopped charred summer vegetables. This was out of Sarah Foster’s Casual Cooking. The steak was supposed to be grilled, but it seems that the BBQ was out of gas… you know how it goes. Pan fried steak makes a good taco, too. The spicy Cilantro-lime sour cream (recipe in Casual Cooking) was awesome.
Dessert: Blond brownies.
Breakfast: Forgot
Mid-morning snack: Birthday cake at another kid’s party. It was pretty good, but three different birthday treats right before lunch did put the whole stomach schedule out of whack!
Lunch: Leftover pork tenderloin sandwich. With Jarlsberg cheese and a some jalapeno/cilantro hummus. Frankly, three great tastes better kept separate, but I was so damn hungry I thought I was on to something.
Afternoon snack: Nothing. Well, there was one See’s candy, but that was just a free sample, so it didn’t really count.
Dinner: More leftover roasted maple-glazed pork tenderloin. This time with glazed carrots. We’d thrown out the sauce for the pork, but the glaze from the carrots was so sweet, it worked perfectly. Over rice, which was a bit dry, but would have been perfect with more carrot glaze.
Dessert: Root beer floats. We didn’t mean to have dessert tonight, but Eliza had a friend over who had never had a root beer float… can you imagine? Then we ran out of vanilla ice cream and all we had was Caramel Peanut-butter-cup swirl. I decided that root beer floats with peanut butter ice cream is about as anti-European as it is possible to get. Frankly, they might have a point on this one. The actual peanut butter and root beer flavor was OK, but the chocolate shell of the peanut butter cup mixed with root beer was just flat-out weird.
Breakfast: Shredded Wheat and grapefruit juice.
Lunch: Ham & cheese sandwich with arugula and spicy mustard, apple.
Afternoon snack: Carrot sticks, dried cherries.
Dinner: Roasted maple-glazed pork tenderloin, broccoli, rice, green salad, which we got to eat outside at our new picnic table!
Dessert: Coffee ice cream and chocolate covered caramels.
Breakfast: Shredded Wheat and grapefruit juice.
Mid-morning snack: Some kind of granola/oat/fruit bar my friend Rebecca offered me as we headed out on a walk.
Lunch: Leftover lasagne cupcakes, apple.
Afternoon snack: It was cold and rainy. Tessa asked for oatmeal. Sounded so good that I made some for myself, too. Lots of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. Perfect comfort-food snack.
Dinner: Anything goes nachos! Everyone’s plate looked a bit different, and we had one serious outlier that included not a speck of cheese. Will someone please talk to my daughter about this? You can’t have nachos without cheese. Am I right? Anyway, here were the topping choices du jour: black beans, sausage, chopped chicken, green onions, black olives, artichoke hearts (random, I know, but requested by small girls, and actually quite good), cheddar cheese, salsa, cilantro, and sour cream.
Breakfast: Shredded Wheat and grapefruit juice.
Mid-morning snack: Yogurt and a banana.
Lunch: Clearly I need to go to the store because all I could scrounge was part of a leftover ham & cheese stuffed chicken breast. Don’t get me wrong, I love leftovers, but I usually like a bit of variety on my plate. Literally all I ate for lunch today was the stuffed chicken. I’m guessing it would have been great in a sandwich if I’d only had some bread.
Afternoon snack: Half a nearly melted ice cream sandwich that my daughter handed me when I picked her up at school. I didn’t expect to like it, but man was it delicious. I now feel better about all the dollar bills that my kids spend on this PTA fundraiser every Wednesday afternoon.
Dinner: Lasagne cupcakes and green salad.
Dessert: First root beer float of the season!
Breakfast: Forgot. Damn, that’s why I’m so hungry.
Lunch: Fried chicken sandwich from Bittersweet Cafe. I’ve been eyeing this sandwich for weeks, but always forget about it when I’m hungry. It was good, but I’m not sure I’ll go back. The lemon-mayo was good, but it suffers from a problem that bugs me about lots of sandwich rolls — too much crust. Not that I object to crust (isn’t that where all the nutrients are?), but if it’s hard, then when you bite it, out squishes the fried chicken. So I’ll stick to Bittersweet for the world’s best hot chocolate.
Afternoon snack: Chocolate-chip cookie from Bittersweet.
Dinner: Leftover chicken, pasta with pesto, zucchini moons with gorgonzola.
Dessert : Leftover birthday cake.