A Few Dinners

Let's talk about food, okay?

I thought I would document what we eat for dinner for a few days. This also turned into a demonstration of the perils of amateur food photography (Shea, this one is for you!). Here we go!

OK, we've got three nights of dinners here. First, let me explain something. Usually Terri and I eat the same thing for dinner, but I'm on this crazy anti-yeast diet right now so I'm eating lots of protein and veggies and almost no starches. Fun, right? Right. Anyway, that's why there are a couple of different dinners on two of the nights.

Thursday night: It's the old stand-by of Breakfast For Dinner. One of my favorites. Here we have a very unattractive photo of a frittata with napa cabbage (on the left) and some pancakes (pre-peanut-buttered) on the right. You can also see such kitchen artifacts as a dried up lemon, various acupuncture herb bottles, and a sponge. Ladies and Gentlemen: How Not To Stage A Photo. However, the dinner itself was good. I am totally into frittatas right now, having made my frist one just a couple weeks ago. I am now addicted. So far my favorite combination is green cabbage (standard cabbage) and red pepper. Terri likes pancakes with peanut butter, and we've got our nice semi-healthy brand here. Unattractive photo, happy dinner.

Friday night: We went wild and decided to have falafel burgers for dinner. I am terrible at deep-frying things because I hate to use up half a bottle of oil just for one dinner, and I'm also afraid of the hot oil spatters. But once in awhile, I like to make falafel and it's always so worth it. This is a better shot. I can see a few things I'd do differently (um, what exactly are those red and blue things in the background?) but overall, not too bad. This is a nice falafel-tahini-avocado-tomato-lettuce burger. It was absolutely delicious.

Saturday night: Another dual dinner night. Terri had a turkey sandwich on whole-grain bread (plus swiss and avocado). I don't know why I like to feature condiments along with the meal shot. Anyway, now you know the mustard and mayonnaise brands in our house.

Since we get a weekly delivery of organic produce, I've been eating a lot of greens lately. I am now completely addicted -- I love them!! I wasn't sure what this bunch of leafies was, actually, but I think it was a variety of curly spinach of some sort. Anyway, I also had a leek and a bundle of baby green garlic. I chopped the leek and garlic and sauteed in a little butter, then washed the spinach and put the wet leaves in to steam. This turned out to be a very delicious combination. This is my attempt at 'arty food shot'.

Now here's where the big clunk happens. There is just no way to make turkey meatloaf look attractive, I'm sorry. I fiddled and fiddled with this photo and it looked worse every time, so here it is, pretty much as-is (a little lightened because it was just awful in the dim light). Again, bad photo, yummy meal. I love meatloaf, but I don't eat red meat almost ever (and poultry rarely as well). So every once in a while I make a ground turkey meatloaf. Yeah, it's more of a meatbrick when you are using such lean meat, but I added some celery and red pepper, and a bunch of other meat-loafy things, and it turned out really tasty. It's that ketchup-worchestershire topping that does it. Yum. This was particularly good with the silky sauteed spinach-like greens.

So that's the last three nights of dinners. It's sort of interesting to photograph each night's dinner. I might try to keep this up a few more nights and see what we get. If I figure out how to make the meatloaf look decent, that will be a miracle.