This is an old post that I never got around to sharing but when it comes to weeknight dinner inspo, I figure it’s better late than never.
This was one of those meals that I came up with about an hour before we had to eat. It had leaf lettuce (the last the CSA has for the season), roasted sweet potatoes, roasted walnuts, and dates with a mustard maple vinaigrette. Checks all the boxes! Well, almost all the boxes…in a perfect world it would either have avo or some kind of cheese…but this was still about as good as it gets.
I used the rest of the roasted walnuts in this meal – the base of which was quinoa with sun dried tomatoes and allllll the oil it was packed in. That seasoned goodness is one of the best parts about it and why I don’t buy the sun dried tomatoes in a bag. Before serving I tossed in some greens (a mix of arugula and spinach), cheese (shaved pecorino romano), and roasted walnuts.
Nugget makes a burgundy pepper marinade that is exceptional and as a result I have discovered I like tri-tip. I’m a little picky about cuts of beef, to be honest. I like ground beef and I like things that can go in the slow cooker and end up being fall-off-the-bone-tender, but when it comes to steak…I don’t like most of them. I think it’s mainly a texture thing because the kinds of steak I do like (flank/skirt) I like well done. No red. I think this is the kind of order that gives steakhouses nightmares. Good thing I don’t go to steakhouses very often.
Back to a meatless meal with this pasta + simple salad. I used up the rest of the CSA lettuce with this salad. It’s the kind of salad I grew up eating – Italian dressing on greens, sliced tomatoes, and marinated artichokes. I made a tomato sauce first (because we have a LOT of tomatoes right now) and then cooked the noodles in the sauce, so they absorbed all that tomato flavor into them. GF pasta is tricky and this method seemed to work out well in terms of not getting mushy or clumping together. I threw in some chard that I had too because why not?! Extra greens are never a bad thing.
More tomato and chard pasta in a skillet! I pre-cooked the noodles in boiling water until they were almost done, but still decently al dente, and then added them to the pan with the other veggies I had been cooking (onion, tomato, chard, and some random leftover chicken breast). I also added Earth Balance to give it a buttery flavor, which made a nice little sauce when it combined with some of the pasta water. On the side, we had corn on the cob.
Thanks to my parents’ never ending orange supply, I made a triple batch of the orange miso vinaigrette dressing from Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow. which I used on this salad. It also had avo, pepitas, and tortilla chips. Way more chips than shown, naturally.
Last, but not least, I got my salmon fix with this meal. I fried two at a time in a pan with coconut oil on super high heat so that it got a beautiful crust on each side. Then I served the filet on a bed of shredded kohlrabi that I sauteed in coconut oil and coconut aminos. Lots of coconut action in this meal! And kohlrabi! You probably can’t tell from the photo, but that massive bowl holds several pounds’ worth of kohlrabi that I cooked in batches in the wee hours of the night (ok, 10 pm) because that was the only time I could eke out food prep in our chaotic summer lives. I have been adding it to lunch salads throughout the week and there is STILL more to get through). Good thing we all love kohlrabi.
