Tuesday: What's for Dinner?

If I don't plan our meals, we eat 'whatever' we can find, and it's not pretty.  On my way home from work today, the girl sitting next to me on the subway was chowing down on her Chinese takeout, and I thought about how they should outlaw eating fragrant foods on public transportation.  Not because it makes me sick, because it doesn't, but because it makes me so terribly hungry for whatever they are eating.  Why would I want to eat fish, despite how much I love it, when I can smell that stranger's broccoli in brown sauce?

Tonight we had flounder (seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper), sauteed veggies (red onions, corn and green beans with salt, pepper and a dash of soy sauce) and a cucumber radish salid (cucumber, radish, red onion, rice vinegar) from Color Me Vegan.

Radishes?  I need to incorporate more of these into my lifestyle!  Crunchy is my favorite texture and it's crucial to every meal I eat in order for me to truly feel satisfied.   Forget substance, I need my crunch.

A mandolin?  Another top five kitchen utensil.  

I thought about making quinoa as opposed to couscous, but time was of the essence.  I cooked it in some vegetable stock and seasoned it with salt, pepper and some lemon.

Thursday Dinner

Whole Broiled/Baked Branzini - My first time baking and broiling a whole fish.  Whole Foods gutted, scaled and cleaned it for me, so it wasn't too difficult.  I rubbed it in some olive oil, seasoned it inside and out with salt and pepper and stuffed it with some lemon slices. Baking it in a foil packet at 400 degrees for whatever time Mark Bittman recommended, was not enough, and I was starving, so I opened it up, turned the broiler on high and just kept a close eye on it.

Red/White Quinoa with Sugar Snap Peas and Zucchini - While the quinoa was cooking in my homemade chicken stock, I cooked some shallots in olive oil and butter and threw in the diced zucchini and chopped snap peas.  Tossed in one teeny, thinly sliced garlic clove, along with a teeny bit of rice wine vinegar and soy sauce, salt and pepper.  I stirred in the quinoa with the vegetables, and when the fish was done, I called it a day.  

Pretty sure I could eat fish every single day for the rest of my life.

P.S. The Chocolate French Bread experiment was DELICIOUS.  Better than a chocolate croissant - suck on that, people!