Meals & Food

I’ve been trying to get away from meat as the center focus of our meals, and one way to do that is to use fish instead. Not always the easiest ingredient to have on hand, I’ve been working on incorporating packaged tuna into dinners.

Here are two recent meals using packaged tuna. I think they were both pretty good.

Tuna mixed with a mixture of olive oil and sesame oil, soy sauce, sesame seeds and salt and pepper, served on a bed of lettuce on top of chopped chilled whole wheat fettucini. I added fresh avocado slices to make it extra tasty. I steamed some baby bok choy and broccoli and tossed it with olive oil and lemon juice. It was yummy!

This is tuna mixed with diced pear and apple, seasoned with a mix of sugar, cayenne and curry. To balance, I steamed/sauteed red potatoes and sliced squash and zuchinni with rosemary and topped with parmesan cheese. Fresh sliced tomatoes and a piece of toasted bread rounded this meal out.

I was inspired to make turkey pot pies. I had made a bunch of turkey stock last weekend and pulled the leftover turkey bits out of the freezer, along with some cranberry sauce. Here’s what I envisioned – light pasty crusts filled with chopped turkey, diced sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, pearl onions and a heavenly cream sauce, served alongside bright cranberry sauce. Here’s the “Making of.”

Cutting the dough to fit the pie pans.Forming the dough in the pie shells.Sauteing the sweet potato and onions.Mixing the chopped turkey with canned peas and carrots. Whisking the cream sauce at a high boil.
Finished pie pans, with “lids” to the left.
Pie pans filled with turkey, sweet potato, carrots and peas.
Topped with cream sauce.
Putting the lids on the pies.
One hour since I started, they are ready to go into the oven.
Fifteen minutes later, they are out of the oven, nice and brown. The finished product, served with cranberry sauce on the side – it was all very yummy!!

Another lovely dinner with Will and Ele, this time at J. Betski’s, a new German/Polish place at Seaboard. I liked my schnitzel (think chicken-fried steak) and I loved the sauerkraut and keilbasa appetizer! Dave thought his pork shoulder was little too fatty, and he never agrees with me that more fat equals more flavor.

I think I talked Ele’s ear off, too. 🙂 We talked about food, weight, exercise, crazy parents, and lots of other good stuff. I really like them. They’re nice, genuine people.

I also learned a trick from Will about how Ele always gets these nice pictures in restaurants. They put a white napkin over the flash – it lowers the brightness but still allows you to get a crisp shot. We had yellowish napkins so all our shots came out with a bit of a funny color.
With this picture, Dave used a white cocktail napkin – much better results!