thoughtful consumption

Ribs

We cooked the ribs from a couple of deliveries ago. I “grilled” them in the oven according to a recipe from How To Cook Everything. I basted them during the last roasting part with a balsamic-orange dressing I originally made for our supper guests. I wasn’t thrilled with it as a salad dressing, but it made a nice marinade.

We ate the ribs with rice grits, butternut squash, and arugula plus some toasted walnuts for fun.

Shepherd’s pie

We made shepherd’s pie to finish up the arugula and some beet greens that had been languishing in the fridge.

Here’s a picture of the pie in progress.

I made 5 pounds of mashed potatoes in order to freeze some for future pies. (Actually, Chris handled the mashing and did a great job!)To freeze them, I mix in a raw egg and spread them into ice cube trays.

Then, once they’re frozen, I pop them out and into a plastic bag for easy division later. I’m not saying that frozen mashed potatoes make perfect mashed potatoes. But they’re definitely good enough for shepherd’s pie.

Eggs and pasta

Speaking of raw eggs, we also made a batch of chocolate-chip cookies last week.

We’re more confident about snarfing up the dough when we use fresh, local eggs. See?

Speaking of fresh, local eggs, scrambled eggs have starred in a couple of recent suppers.

eggs, garlic bread, and spinach with walnuts

salad, eggs, and sweet potato

And pasta made up the rest.

spinach and salmon-garlic scape casserole

The salmon-garlic scape casserole was pretty good. I combined the pesto with the salmon and a little bit of cream cheese, then tossed the pasta in it, and put it in the oven for about 15 minutes.

However, I don’t think I’ll make this again. I ’d never used salmon from a can before. While I was expecting the taste to be marginal, I wasn’t expecting was all the bones. There were four or five vertebrae along with countless little bones!