Food on Friday: Dinner on Average

Dinner on a week night is usually planned ahead of time. I know roughly what I'm going to make in a given week, and buy my ingredients accordingly, but it often changes and I give myself the liberty to modify on a whim. Recently, Chance and I have been eating beef tacos (YUM!) once a week, but after both of us had some inconvenient symptoms we both decided that we needed to lay off the red meat for a while and eat more vegetarian dinners. I get a lot of recipe ideas from The Gluten-Free Goddess and other foodie blogs. Now when I propose to my husband the idea of making a new meal, he usually responds with a mixture of open-mindedness and reluctancy. Such was last night.

Mine wasn't this pretty, but still tasty!

I had been talking about making this quinoa recipe for dinner and when I mentioned it again to Chance he was a little less than enthusiastic. But nonetheless he was willing to try it, so after I got home from work I threw some quinoa in the rice cooker (best investment ever!) sliced some peppers and onions and put those on a baking sheet. While the peppers were roasting/grilling in the oven, I chopped up some scallions and parsley to throw in the quinoa. When the quinoa was cooked, I mixed in my add-ins along with a lemon's worth of lemon juice and some salt. Voila! Our meal was almost ready to be consumed. [While I was cooking, Chance was reading.. not sure what was going through his mind at this point, probably just hunger]. I dished up the quinoa onto two plates, along with the roasted peppers and onions, then put hummus and pesto on the table to be added if one so desired.

I put Chance's plate out first and as he took his first bite, his reaction was well... not that impressed. He made some funny facial expressions and said, "How much lemon did you put in this?" and I responded with a surprised, "Not that much!" After two or three more bites he calmed down and began to actually enjoy the dinner. I sat down and we both dove in. Hummus on roasted or grilled veggies is a-mazing, just so you know. I asked Chance what he thought of the meal (by the way, I had told him before we ate that if he didn't like dinner I wouldn't make it again). His response was that it was good. Then a few bites later the meal was "really good." Then a whole two helpings later, "That was an excellent meal Kathryn!" I love when he loves my cooking, it brings me such joy. So I would say that dinner on average, especially when I am making new recipes, always goes a little something like that.

Last night I also whipped up a soup for us to have for lunch today. Black bean soup to be exact. I have never made black bean soup using the food processor before, but now that I  have I am totally in love with the concept. I used two recipes (here and here too) as my inspiration and then kind of just did my own thing. This was my recipe:

Ingredients:
1 cup chicken broth or water
2 cans of black beans, drained
1 can fire roasted tomatoes
2 tsp. cumin (more or less to taste)
1 tsp. salt
2 cloves garlic, minced
Some onion powder
(if I had had some cilantro, I'd have added about 1/4 cup chopped, but it was good without it too)

Directions:
-Combine all of the above ingredients in the food processor until blended thoroughly.

-In a medium pot on the stove, cook 6 slices of bacon (hardwood smoked was great!) that has been chopped into small pieces. Cook through. Add your soup mixture from the food processor to the pot and heat on medium-low until it begins to bubble.

Mmmm enjoy! This was so easy.. I am going to start making all kinds of bean soups in the food processor! I hope you enjoy your Friday :)