menu plan april iii

I'm back!  DC was amazing.  I really enjoy it, as a city.  It's like a nice compromise between New York and Nashville - large enough to not really need a car, but not quite so dense.  The Metro is like a happy little miniature subway (although the Brutalist architecture can be a little overwhelming).  Also, I had some really great food.  Highlights:

Republic:  local, great seafood (had oysters), sustainable, beautiful inventive drink menu (Takoma Park).
Matchbox:  wood-fired pizza, great salads, oysters were also lovely (14th Street).
Ted's Bulletin:  adult milk shakes, homemade pop tarts.  Need I say more?  (14th Street).
ShopHouse:  think Chipotle but with Thai/Vietnamese food.  Ridiculously good, cheap, fast.  Nashville needs one of these stat.  (Chinatown, but there are tons of locations).

Wonderful friends and colleagues pretending to listen to me tell some story.  ;)

After all that beautiful food and fellowship (and learning), I was ready to get back to some of my home cooking.  And my kids - I like them too.

Here's what's up in the kitchen this week:

Sunday
-- breakfast:  soaked oatmeal with raisins, cinnamon, home-canned apples, and honey; coffee + milk
-- lunch:  pork ribs with barbecue sauce, ravioli, salad, rolls
-- supper:  breakfast for dinner night with my Family Dinner peeps!  We brought sweet potato hash.  Soooo much good food:  waffles, eggs, biscuits and gravy, fruit salad, and the hash.

Monday
-- breakfast:  we were in a rush!  Granola, yogurt, honey.  Coffee + milk.
-- lunch:  I'm still pondering.  Do I grab something while out visiting?  Or do I eat the leftover chicken and rice with lentils that I brought?
-- supper:  this bulgur wheat salad, I think.  I will add roasted cherry tomatoes I froze last summer, and some soaked and cooked chickpeas for heft.

Tuesday
-- breakfast:  scrambled eggs, bacon, sourdough toast, jam, satsumas, coffee + milk
-- lunch:  leftover bulgur salad, kombucha
-- supper:  Korean beef with broccoli, rice, kimchi

Wednesday
-- breakfast:  scrambled eggs, bacon, sourdough toast, jam, satsumas, coffee + milk
-- lunch:  leftover Korean beef and rice, water kefir
-- supper:  Shrimp Fra Diavolo (recipe coming soon!), fettuccine, green beans

Thursday
-- breakfast:  soaked pancakes with butter and maple syrup, home-canned apples, sausage patties, coffee + milk
-- lunch:  out somewhere between two Bible studies - probably Panera for a big salad?
-- supper:  grilled bratwurst on sourdough buns with mustard and sauerkraut, sweet potato fries

Friday
-- breakfast:  blackberry-banana-yogurt smoothies, crispy walnuts and chocolate chips, coffee + milk
-- lunch:  leftovers of whatever
-- supper:  we are cooking out at the home of one of my great friends from my clergy covenant group!  Can't wait to get all the families and kids together.  I'm bringing a German potato salad.

Saturday
-- breakfast:  I'm positive Vicki will want pancakes.  :)
-- lunch:  pumpkin soup, crackers, cheese, pickles, kombucha
-- supper:  this will be the wedding I'm doing for my dear friend and brother-in-law Chase, and his fiance Carly.  So excited for us to be a part of it!  Vicki will be a flower girl, too.

So, what's up with y'all?  What are you doing?  Or eating?

[This post submitted to Menu Plan Monday 4/20/15.]

create your own

There were two magical dining spots during my college days.  One is the Columbia Cottage, which I still can't bring myself to blog about because it is so close to my heart.  It's like saying the name of your first love.  Suffice it to say that it's an alternate universe where peace and well-being and the deepest conversations flow as freely as the all-you-can-drink boxed wine.

The other is Milano Market.  Located just around the corner from my sorority house, this specialty market was rife with sandwiches, soups, pre-portioned entrees and sides, and many imported and fancy little products (olives, pickles, mustard, candies).  These kinds of markets are common in the City.  It's not at all where you would do your regular grocery shopping (in fact, most people don't even "go shopping," per se, but rather have their groceries delivered to their apartments), but when you want some special and frivolous little bite, it's your spot.

But the real draw - the main attraction - was the salads.  The concept was simple but genius.  Exactly like Subway, or any other restaurant where you customize your dish based on your whims.  You have a choice of three different salad greens:  romaine, spinach, baby mixed greens.  Then you just go crazy, telling the guy to put anything and everything in there.  I want to say there were about forty options.  Chicken (grilled, pesto, sundried tomato), ham, bacon, olives, broccoli, carrots, chickpeas, tomatoes, peppers, pepperoncini, avocado, kidney beans, cucumbers, boiled eggs, raisins, dried cranberries, croutons, and probably twelve choices of dressing (and so much more).  He mixed it all up for you in a big bowl, then popped it into a 20-oz container with a lid.  Dinner:  done.  I could not begin to count the nights that we stopped here for a salad before Chapter Meeting and ate it on the stoop.

The most awesome part was the price!  For a salad with chicken, I think it was about $7, with unlimited toppings.  Certain ones, like avocado, might have been an additional charge.  (Warning:  this was all 7-10 years ago.  Things may have changed!)

I find myself craving these huge, satisfying salads all the time.  And the thing is, it's really much more economical to go somewhere and pay for it because amassing all those ingredients in the proper quantities and eating all of them before they go bad would cost much more than the price of your single salad.  Or even two or three of them.

I brag on our sweet neighborhood all the time, but we are missing something like a Milano Market.  Should I open one?  Should I finally allow Jeff to satisfy his lifelong restaurant dream?  Only thing is, there wouldn't be sit-down service.  This is strictly a drop-in, take your lunch or dinner home or back to work kind of place.  I think East Nashville might love it.  Thoughts?

now jeff at the bar is a friend of mine . . .

He gets me my drinks for free.  I thought it was time you learned a little bit about the bartender in this pastor and bartender pair.  When Jeff and I first met in 2003 (can it have been eight years ago?), I was drawn to the same things that still attract me to him.  He is warm, friendly, and gregarious.  He has a knack for making each person he talks to feel special.  He makes new best friends everywhere he goes, including an Australian guy on a plane ride and many citizens of the town of Salisbury on our honeymoon.

In short, he possesses many of the gifts that God didn't give me.  I'm that person next to you on the plane with her ipod on, a book open, and a look that says "please don't converse with me."  I detest small talk - a special punishment for a pastor who is required to do it constantly.  While our opposites-attract arrangement produces harmony and balance for the most part, it does also create some sticky situations.

Jeff and I met while we were working for the summer at the Mountain Tennessee Outreach Project.  It's a rural, not-for-profit Christian agency, affiliated with the Tennessee Conference of the United Methodist Church, in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee.  It is dedicated to social service programming through a philosophy of partnership in a faith-in-action classroom.  (Any old-school staffers feel me on still having the Statement of Values memorized!?  I think I hit all seven points.)  This is a place that would be incredibly special and meaningful for both of us as we continued to work here, on and off, for the next five years.  We were even married down the road at the Beersheba Springs Assembly by the Executive Director of the organization!

Jeff is a risk-taker, and he trusts people easily.  He is optimistic to a fault.  He loves to make people happy.  For all of these reasons, he loves his job, but his dream is to open his own restaurant.  This proposal presents a number of issues for me:  I'm financially conservative and am terrified at the high failure rate of new restaurants; I already feel like we operate on opposite schedules; and I'm called to an itinerant ministry, which stands in opposition to the stability and longevity needed in a community to create good restaurant traffic.

As much as the thought of opening a restaurant together terrifies me, I also think everyone deserves a chance to go for their dream.  I have had lots of opportunities to fulfill my aspirations, and my life feels a lot richer because of it.  So, everyone reading now - you have to promise to give us your business when the time comes!