Sofie's Birthday Dinner - Spice Rubbed Pork Tenderloin and Pasta

Thanksgiving falls on my daughter's birthday this year and she protested the fact that instead of having both a Thanksgiving holiday dinner and a birthday dinner, should would only one or the other.   So, we decided to celebrate our Thanksgiving on Wednesday (yesterday) and Sofie requested her favorite dinner for her birthday-- Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin with a side of Pasta. 

I have written many other posts about my Spice-Rubbed Pork Tenderloin.    Everyone who tries this dish thinks it is totally delicious and it turned out great for Sofie's birthday dinner as well.

We don't usually serve this with pasta, but Sofie requested it.  Sofie likes her pasta either plain with some butter and fresh grated Parmesean or with some sweet tomato sauce.  For my wife and I, I made some pesto using fresh basil, parsley, toasted pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic and mixed this with pasta and fresh tomatoes.

For dessert, Kelly made apple slices with melted chocolate and caramel. 

Traditional Thanksgiving Dinner

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday.    My daughter's birthday falls on Thanksgiving this year and she thought it was unfair that instead of having two special days, she would have only one this year.   So, since it was just going to be us this year, no guests, we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday.  

I ordered an organic whole Turkey breast from Whole Foods.   This is the first time I have cooked just Turkey breast instead of a whole turkey, and I liked it much better.   The cooking time was much less and I didn't end up with a giant roasted bird I needed to carve and a lot dark meat that would go uneaten (especially since I have been eating a healthier diet).

I put the 7lb turkey breast in the oven at about 1:30 in the afternoon.   I coat the chicken with butter and then sprinkle salt, pepper, and Herbs de Provence  over the turkey and roast at 350 degrees, uncovered in the oven until the meat about 175 degrees.    

While the turkey roasted I made the other dishes:  fresh green beans, sweet potatoes (topped with marshmallows), mashed potatoes, dressing/stuffing (Pepperidge Farms), cranberry sauce (from a can), gravy (from a jar), and dinner rolls.   Its clearly not a gourmet Thanksgiving dinner.   Our dinner is pretty much made up of the dishes both my wife and I ate at Thanksgiving as kids minus the stuff we didn't like and still don't like green bean casserole and scalloped potatoes.   Actually, as a kid, I ate only the green beans, rolls, turkey, and marshmallow topping on the sweet potatoes.

I had dinner on the table a little before 6pm, so the whole meal took a little less than four and a half hours to prepare.   We all thought it was one of the best Thanksgiving dinners we have had.  I did count the calories and although I didn't weigh everything, I estimated that I ate about 1,000 calories for dinner. 

Herbed Chicken with Zesty Potato Salad

On Sunday, my wife, Kelly, made another dish using a recipe from the Williams-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook.   The recipe, Herbed Chicken with Zesty Potato Salad, calls for browning the chicken over the stove and then cooking for several hours in the slow cooker.  

The dish includes onion, garlic, thyme, oregano, and bay leaves, and although I always appreciate a new and different dish for dinner, I thought the flavors were a little strong and the chicken a little dry.   The recipe calls for bone-in chicken thighs, but we used boneless, skinless chicken breasts and I think the substitution contributed to the less than spectacular results.

The potato salad turned out great and it is something I would make again.  Another blogger used this recipe and wrote about it in more detail here.

Birthday Dinner for Kelly at The Village Pub

It was my wife's birthday on Thursday and on her request we went out to dinner at The Village Pub in Woodside, CA.   This has been one of our favorite restaurants for several years now and I am sure it is considered one of the best restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

THE VILLAGE PUB

On my birthday, I picked Giovanni's pizza.  I had not eaten pizza for months since I had been eating a healthier diet.   It was good, but if you compare our choices of birthday dinners,  there's no doubt who is the classier person in this relationship.

Dinner was amazing.   We both had the pumpkin soup and baked scallops for dinner.  Our daughter had a roasted pork chop with cooked apples and of course plenty of homemade dinner rolls.  Everything was memorable and it was really the first time we have taken our daughter to a nice restaurant and she really enjoyed it and ate something other than bread and pasta.

Mini-Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta, and Mint

Mini-Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta, and Mint is a dish based on a Cooking Light recipe I have written about in this blog several times.   It has always been a reliable and delicious vegetarian dish that I look forward to making.   But on Tuesday night, I succeeded in ruining this simple dish.  

 Photo: John Autry; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

On Tuesdays, my daughter has dance until about 6:30pm and then my wife picks her up and they return home at around 7pm.   I like to have dinner ready when they walk through the door so that my daughter ends up getting to bed at a decent time and also because by 7pm everybody is usually pretty hungry (and sometimes cranky).

Everything seemed to be going well, but when we sat down to eat, I realized I forgot to toast the pine nuts and I forgot to add the raisins when I was cooking the onions and garlic.   What I soon discovered is that the pine nuts and raisins are really important to the flavor of this dish.  Without the sweetness from the raisins and nutty flavor of the pine nuts, this dish is just bland and a chore to finish eating! 

Well, we ate it anyway, and although my wife said it was alright, I was disappointed.   I had planned to serve this for left overs on Wednesday, and I did, but I toasted some pine nuts and sauteed some raisins in a little bit olive oil and threw the pine nuts and raisins into the dish and it was as delicious as I remembered.

Picadillo Tostadas

For the past few weeks, my wife has been cooking some of the weekend dinners and using recipes from the Williams-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook by Brigit Binns.   The dinners have been amazing.   Brigit Binns has published several cookbooks and they all look like they could be just as fantastic as the New Slow Cooker Cookbook.  

For dinner on Sunday, my wife made Picadillo Tostadas.   This recipe is not online, so unfortunately, I can not provide a link to the recipe, but I will do my best to describe it without copying the recipe word for word.   The boneless beef chuck is browned in oil over the stove and then placed in the slow cooker.   The same pan is used to saute onion and garlic which is then placed in the slow cooker along with apple, vinegar, and tomatoes, raisins, and spices of bay leaves, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and pepper.   The whole dish is cooked for 5 hours in the slow cooker and served over corn tortillas with a slaw made from carrots and cabbage.

I thought this dish was delicious but my wife said she didn't like it too much and that she realized that she wasn't a big fan of chuck roast.  

Black Bean Salad

After some heavier meals I made from the Chicken Biryani I made last Thursday, I decided to make something a bit lighter and serve a black bean salad for dinner on Saturday.   I used a Cooking Light recipe for the salad.  

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Fonda Shaia

The ingredients include avocado, lettuce, black beans, tomatoes, fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, green onions, and jalapeno.   At less than 200 calories per serving, this salad needed a bit more substance to make this a meal, so I added some roasted chicken I bought already roasted from the grocery store and I made a dressing for the salad.    The dressing included some olive oil, vinaigrette, fresh garlic, chili powder, sugar, and lime juice.   This is my take on a southwestern variation of a greek salad dressing.  

With the chicken and the dressing, dinner came in at a little over 400 calories and it was delicious and satisfying.

Chicken Biryani

Cooking Light's recipe for Chicken Biryani has been on my to-do list for a long time and I am really glad I decided to make this on Thursday.   This dish was one of my favorite meals so far this fall.  

Photo: Randy Mayor; Styling: Cindy Barr

A few years back, I took a few trips to India as part of my job and when the team went out for dinner, some type of Biryani was always among the many dishes we would share at dinner.   Fresh ginger, cumin, garam masala, and fresh cilantro give this dish a wonderful flavor.   My wife likes Indian food and she always seems to appreciate the Indian dishes I make. 

Salmon with Tangy Cucumber Sauce

Salmon with Tangy Cucumber Sauce is a dish I have made before but I have not written about.   This is Cooking Light recipe I found on myrecipes.com.   The recipe calls for grilling the fish and the seasoning on the fish is just some salt and pepper. 

 I have had so many bad experiences grilling fish, with my fish falling apart on the grill, that I haven't even tried to grill fish for for several years.   I should probably get a grill rack for fish and give it another shot sometime.   I cooked the salmon on the stove top in a little butter and olive oil, a few minutes on each side.   I used some nice thick pieces of wild-caught Alaskan king salmon and I cut the skin off before I cooked the fish. 

Unfortunately, salmon season is over, and this fish was previously frozen, so it wasn't quite as good as some of the fresh salmon we have had this year.   Well, this dish is really about the cucumber dill sauce.   The sauce includes cucumber, sour cream, green onion, fresh dill, lemon juice, horseradish and salt.   I love this sauce mixed with the salmon. 

I served the salmon with roasted potatoes with parsley and parmesean cheese and some asparagus which I steamed for less than 5 minutes and then sauteed in olive oil for a few more minutes.   Everything was really delicious.

Slow Cooker Beef Short Rib Ragu with Papperdelle Pasta

My wife did the cooking again this Sunday and made another recipe from the Williams-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook.   This time she made Beef Short Rib Ragu with Papperdelle Pasta. 

OMG!   This was amazing.   I am not quite sure if it was better than the Spicy Pork she made last week, but it was definitely in the same league.   It was incredibly good. 

The ribs cooked for almost 8 hours in the slow cooker.   After which the meat is taken off the bone, mixed with the sauce and served over Papperdelle pasta. 

My wife said she was inspired to try this recipe after the lunch we had downtown Chicago at Spiaggia Cafe last summer.   She had the Wild Boar Ragu at Spiaggia and it was incredible.    (Don't tell Spiaggia, but I think the beef short rib ragu turned out as well as Spiaggia's ragu).

Someone else who was deeply impressed with this recipe has posted the recipe online.   William-Sonoma New Slow Cooker Cookbook recipe for Beef Short Rib Ragu.

Spicy Southwestern Dinner - Redux

For dinner on Thursday, I did a repeat of the Spicy Southwestern dinner I made back in August.    I've been trying not make any dish more than 4 times per year, so I have a put a 3 month waiting period between all repeats.   But I have to say, I have been looking forward to a repeat of this meal since August.  

 Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Cindy Barr

The Southwestern Tabbouleh is a riff on a classic middle eastern dish I grew up eating but with the bold southwestern flavors I have come to love since moving to the west coast.  

The recipes for the Southwestern Chicken Soup and Southwestern Tabbouleh both come from Cooking Light and I think the versions I made tonight were my best attempts yet at reproducing these delicious dishes.

Halibut with Mint Chutney

Halibut with Mint Chutney is one of our favorite dishes.   I wrote about this same dish back in March.    I haven't made this dish as frequently as I did last year, because I have found so many new recipes I love.     This is a Cooking Light recipe you can find at myrecipes.com.

This dish has Indian flavors so I served the halibut with Basmati rice and the same Indian Spiced Green Beans I often serve with Tandoori Chicken.  

It was a healthy and delicious dinner and less than 500 calories for 4oz of halibut, half cup of the green beans, and 2oz of cooked rice.

Pork with Spicy Squash

My wife did all the cooking this weekend.   Both nights she made dinner using recipes from The New Slow Cooker Cookbook from Williams Sonoma. 

On Sunday, she made Pork with Spicy Squash.    This dish was amazing.   I enjoyed this dinner more than anything we have had in the past few months.  It was really delicious.   There are many flavors happening in this dish including butternut squash, fresh cilantro, fresh basil, peanut oil, slow cooked pork shoulder, onion, lime vinaigrette, and wine.   Wow! 

This recipe is also online and I provided the link above.   I am really looking forward to eating the left overs tomorrow night!

Creamy Herbed Polenta with Mushrooms

My wife checked out a Williams-Sonoma slow cooker recipe book from the library and wanted to try some recipes so she did the cooking on Saturday night.

She decided to make Creamy Herbed Polenta with Mushrooms.    We served this with some roasted chicken.   I am not a big fan of polenta, but its ok once in a while.   I really enjoyed the flavor of the mushrooms with the fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, and oregano).   We both said this is probably not a dish we would make again soon.

Polenta with Mushrooms

Gnocchi with Shrimp, Asparagus, and Pesto

Every once in a while, dinner doesn't turn out well.   We had pizza take out last night since it was Halloween and we didn't have time to shop and cook a proper dinner.    So, tonight I planned to make something that need to provide us with one meal and no left overs.  

Photo: Lee Harrelson; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

Several months ago, I made Cooking Light's Gnocchi with Shrimp, Asparagus, and Pesto.   It was delicious and I loved the homemade pesto so much that I have made several different pesto dishes since then.   Unfortunately, tonight's dinner did not match expectations set by my previous attempt at this recipe.  

The only real issue was the pasta.   I bought fresh Gnocchi from whole foods, like I did last time.  I didn't realize that I had picked up wheat-free Gnocchi.   It wasn't good at all and it pretty much ruined the whole dish.  After a few bites, I started picking out the shrimp and asparagus which were alright.   The homemade pesto turned out well. 

Overall, though, a disappointing dinner.  :(