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Weekend Food
Our parents arrived in time for a late lunch today, for which we had the same vegetable stew I mentioned yesterday. Both days it was great with a some store-bought French bread (heated up in the oven).
For dinner, I made a feast in honor of my in-laws' 32nd wedding anniversary. The main dish was the creamy lemon pasta from the Moosewood Simple Suppers cookbook. For a side dish we had broccoli sauteed in a bit of olive oil with red pepper flakes, garlic, and coarse salt. Dessert included an apple crisp recipe and completely homemade frozen yogurt--as I said to my guests, yesterday it was milk.
On tap for tomorrow: homemade pizza for lunch and then Lauren is making a baked chip dip from cream cheese, salsa, and cheese (we're hosting a mini-party for the Bengals-Browns game). It will, surely, all be yummy.
In case you were curious, here was the vegetable soup I made. It was fairly good (not great), so any ideas anyone has for improvements are welcome.
I started by preparing some dried pinto beans, soaking them the requisite hours. I thawed three cups of the chicken broth that I made when I cooked my most recent chicken, added about as much water, and cooked brown rice in the crock pot. To this I added about half of a sweet potato that I had left over from a meal I made last week. I cut up a potato, onion, and a carrot as well. Eventually, I added a can of tomatoes (probably could have added more) and a thawed bag of frozen spinach. Some spiced made it in as well: oregano, black and red pepper, paprika, salt, and a little bit of cumin. Admittedly, it was a pretty random bunch of spices.
It was hearty and fairly good, but definitely lacking something. We added cheese today, and that was a fine addition, but not the be-all and end all. More tomotoes might have helped too. I almost added corn, but didn't. It wouldn't have hurt, but I don't know that it would have helped that much either. Any ideas? One thing I liked about it was how visually appealing it was, with so many different colors and shades.