it didn’t occur to me until this morning when i uploaded this image to flickr that last night’s dinner was not “plated” in the most appetizing manner. true! it looks foul. that lump of refried beans is revolting. however! it was delicious. inspired by the “drew special”, a plate of mounds of things, plus tortillas, available at golden west, the best place to eat in baltimore, i decided to make a fall plate of sorts. kind of like a picnic plate meets taco night.

it consisted of (!!!):

*kale with garlic and lemon
*rice (about 50% jasmine and 50% some nutty brown combo…whatever was left)
*refried beans (we like amy’s and in this instance used the jalapeno-flecked variety)
*roasted yams (with olive oil, salt and a little sugar)
*honey wheat tortillas
*pineapple salsa, sour cream and shredded pepper jack for accessorizing

i made mine into giant taco-like things while ian piled the assorted extras on top and ate the mound as it was. both acceptable methods!

also, that particular pumpkin ale is not the very best, but was the only variety available at jss last night. my cousin was telling us about a bar near where my aunt and uncle live in new hampshire that has pumpkin ale on tap and serves it in a glass with a cinnamon rim! omg.

karie visited again for the day!
we finally had soccer tacos in red hook and walked around a bit.
sadly, saipua (makers of the best smelling soaps) seemed to be closed.
also
i think i want to live in red hook.

we’re nearing the end of our second week on a wheat-free diet and beginning to believe that wheat was/is not the problem. ian has some allergy issues and so we’ve been trying out various elimination diets to see if maybe it’s food related. so far, not milk, probably not wheat. i read some possible-quack stuff last night about all allergies stemming from improper digestive function/food allergies, but i dunno. i think it’s mostly bunk. this is not to say that i don’t believe in food allergies because i have some friends with real and serious ones. but in this case, i think maybe our little furry friend (who’s been shedding like he’s got fur to spare lately) might be to blame.

regardless of whether or not the wheat-free experiment was a success, i have to say that such self-imposed limitations are an exciting challenge when it comes to cooking dinner. i wouldn’t necessarily make sorrel pesto again (not horrible, but could have benefited from some parmesan, which we were out of) but the frittata (ian’s creation) was amazing, and i don’t usually like eggs! and thinking so hard about what to make for dinner seems invariably to result in eating super healthfully.

other than excluding dairy and wheat, i’m not sure what else we could try. maybe a month without corn? ha! that would be a challenge for sure. or you know, we could have the dog shorn?

ian has given up dairy! temporarily! it is a test to see whether or not he feels better. less snuffly. more Alert! Awake! Alive!
since i’ve been a homebody, working from casa del solewhitmore (ahem…ha?) i’ve felt the need to make nice dinnerz for the boy, seeing as he has to, you know, work. however, my dairy-free repertoire is, come to find out, surprisingly limited!
a man cannot subsist on salad alone.
and so, this week i found myself making an unnerving amount of curried this and thats. don’t get me wrong! curry is important. vital, even. but curry every night? a bit too much.
so kathryn suggested i make some chili tonight, given that it’s all rainy and miserable outside, and i thought this an inspired choice. but! what to serve with it? no salad. no cornbread…(doesn’t it need milk?…butter?) the next logical pairing is, of course, scallion pancakes. and so it was.

i made ian one of these when he came home for lunch (still tasting toothpaste, i did not join him) and decided when my lunchtime rolled around to make another.

*salt-wilted kale
*handful of chopped parsley
*1 carrot
*1 small apple
*1 clove garlic, chopped
*1/2 avocado
*handful of pine nuts
*juice of 1/2 lemon
*dash of olive oil
*dash of balsamic vinegar
*a few shakes herbes de provence

i haven’t had a banana since being gently shamed by a local foodist co-worker last summer. don’t get me wrong, i’m not off of them for life; part of the reason is that i just sort of forgot about them. but it just occurred to me that maybe avocados are shameful as well. since an avocadoless lifestyle is entirely unacceptable, maybe we need to move to california? hm.

oh! back to sewing

home

new and newish jobs for me and the boy have disrupted our routines a bit and made for fewer trips to the grocery store and lots more restaurant food lately. this being the end of week one for me of this new routine (which includes weekends off!!!) i think i can safely say that soon we’ll have it down and not only will we be carrying on with our aspiring cooks’ ways (i’ve given ian a subscription to cooks illustrated as an early birthday present…we’ll be foodies before we know it,) but we’ll also (ahem, *i’ll* also) be organized enough with time to be able to get some actual work done. yes, i know. a tired subject.

so anyway! the real excitement is given that we’re in like, the best city in the world, there are endless out-food options at our bony fingertips when each evening we reconvene at home to mull over what to do about dinner. last night we did something new that seemed far too obvious before: we ordered carryout from our downstairs neighbors, sapporo haru. duuuuhhhhh. i mean, we’d eaten there once (our first night here) and i’ve ordered avocado rolls a few times when ian’s away, but we’d never actually ordered dinner from them before. now i think we’ll have to try really hard not to do it *all the time* because it was not only so amazingly good *and* just downstairs but frankie gave us a complimentary bottle of sake!

i guess that’s all…just wanted to gush about sushi online…

so what’s new? what’s up with this hot weather? isn’t it supposed to be fall?

oh! and also, we went to the paul smith boutique in soho yesterday and i am *IN LOVE* with the whole thing + everything in it and paul smith is a total genius.

ok. that’s it!