Stuffed Peppers at Home

First, a note. I have been super-busy the last week or so, but I wrote a guest post last week over at CardioFoodie about packing lunches (Jon says I sound like Martha Stewart, so I apologize in advance). I know CardioFoodie, aka Karissa, from our time living in Texas. She always has a lot of awesome advice about healthier eating and fitness, that I aspire to (and sometimes successfully do) integrate into my life. So go check her out.

In other news, Jon decided to go pesca-veggie last week. Completely out of the blue. I know it's healthy, I am no stranger to alternative proteins, and I love whole grains and veggies, but it's a little weird coming from him. Not because I don't think he can sustain it (apparently he was quasi-vegetarian for several years in college), but because I'm used to being the fiber-conscious, veggie-pushing nut around here. I might go a little crazy. We'll see.

In that context, tonight's dinner was roasted red peppers stuffed with quinoa, mushrooms, onion, cashews, cumin, and cinnamon, with a TJ's brand Dunkelweisen to drink.



Jon actually cooked dinner, despite being in the midst of finals. As you might have guessed, he is amazing. He was able to minimize the active cooking time by making the quinoa in our rice cooker (yet another reason why my rice cooker is the best thing ever).

It was SO tasty. The cashews made it very hearty and filling, and the red quinoa we used was super-healthy, with a great, slightly chewy texture. It allowed me to eat a ton of healthy crap, without the slightly hungry, nauseous feeling I usually get from eating a ton of veggies.

We found the recipe using Whole Foods Recipe App, which is- despite my skepticism of food apps and general dislike of following recipes- also awesome. They have a ton of great recipes targeted to our urban-foodie-freak demographic, indexed according to selectable categories like "vegetarian", "gluten-free", etc., as well as an ability to search by ingredient.

The Dunkelweissen was also pretty good. I couldn't remember which TJ's beer I liked best from the mixed 12-pack we got last month, so I bought some of their Vienna-style in addition to the Dunkel. I definitely prefer the heavier Dunkel, although all of their beers I've tried are decent.

Light Lunch at Home

For lunch, I had smoked salmon, cranberry compote, and butter on a roll from Whole Foods.

The salmon is leftover tidbits that are getting old; the compote is basically thick cranberry sauce I made last night out of leftover Thanksgiving cranberries. I was curious to try WF's "seeduction" roll after some friends made a DIY version as part of their Thanksgiving dinner. The combination was pretty tasty. My inspiration was the Sironia turkey sandwich from the late, much-mourned JD's Art Cafe in Waco, TX (don't laugh- rumor has it JD was married to an amazing French-trained pastry chef, and I'll be trying desperately to track down her gorgeous cake recipes for the rest of my life). The Sironia was the historic building's name, and the sandwich was allegedly based on one served at a cafeteria in the building in the 1950s. I have no idea how I got smoked salmon and butter from turkey, cream cheese, and cranberry sauce, but whatever. I see the Sironia is back, in the form of an antique mall, apparently.

Salmon at Home

Last night, I ate baked salmon and rice for dinner.

The salmon was from Whole Foods, one of their pre-seasoned fish selections. I chose the almond-encrusted honey seasoning because it sounded revoltingly sweet and a little strange. In fact, it was very good, in a buttery-sweet sort of way. We'd planned on eating our fave canned fava beans (Palestinian recipe is the best, btw), but I ended up making more tasty basmati rice in the cooker instead. To drink, I had a Lone Star beer, the PBR of Texas. Yum.