So...whats for dinner?

MinusTwo

Tonight will be leftover linguine from a restaurant shrimp scampi dinner on Sunday. There were only 4 shrimp, so I ate all those and then concentrated on the wonderful bread. Before I left the restaurant I added the delicious dipping sauce w/Parmesan & oil & peppers & spices to my noodles. Tonight all I have to do is add shrimp again.

ChiSandy

Wednesday Roman food porn (cocktail reception at Museo di Roma on the Piazzo Navona). Porchetta sliders:

Caprese, prosciutto, salmon, & tuna sliders, fruit kabobs:

Octopus salad, branzino crudo:

Croissant sandwiches (prosciutto, mortadella, hot sopressata):

Crostini (olive-oil fried quail egg, anchovy & cream cheese, lox):

There’s always room for dessert (chocolate mousse, crema catalana, tiramisu, strawberry panna cotta; the salad & crudo in foreground):

Stopped earlier at a Nespresso boutique for pistachio financiers, almond biscotti, amaretti, and chocolate/Sichuan peppercorn amaretti. (Plus a sleeve of robusta capsules for home). Will make a platter of those nibbles once I get home. Before going to the hotel to freshen up before dinner, stopped at “Pecoro Pazzo” (“Crazy Sheep”) rosticceria for suppli (filled with rice, marinara & mozzarella—the size of a torpedo). After dinner, cabbed it back to Gracchi only to find it closed early (surprising how early stuff closes here before summer), so went to a rival gelteria for a scoop each of fior di latte (fresh mozzarella/yogurt) and Malaga (closest it gets to rum raisin)

eric95us

I may have "pink eye"...sigh.

Egads007

ChiSandy - for crying out loud why didn’t you sneak me into your luggage?!?!? Lol! Food looks amazing and the trip sounds like nirvana!! Enjoy!...please take a bite and sip for me!

carolehalston

Last night's chicken piccata sort of dish came out delicious. Love the preserved lemon. The little red boiled potatoes were yummy, too. We each had a romaine salad, mine with minimum avocado and no blue cheese and white balsamic vinegar for dressing.

Tonight will make use of some skirt steak in the freezer, also a carton of home cooked black beans and ripe avocadoes in the veggie drawer. Also some corn tortillas on hand. Fajitas.

I'm working on using up the food in the freezers before our departure date, May 21. Hope the snow has melted in MN!

ChiSandy

Lunchtime food porn at Cafe Romano in the Hotel d’Inghleterra, where I’m staying.

Tagliarini cacio e pepe with fried artichokes and zucchini blossoms above, mignardises below:

MinusTwo

Eric - sorry to hear about the eye. Hope it's not pink eye.

Oh dear, I'm sunk. My neighbor across the street just brought me a "chicken biscuit" from Chick Filet. The scale was up 2 lbs this morning, but this is a rare treat for me. Warm, buttered, crumbly biscuit with lightly fried chicken breast inside. Oh my. I seriously thought about throwing it away (Really??) but since I only eat this delight a couple of times a year I'm chewing as I write.

SpecialK

minus - I feel ya - I went to brunch last Sunday with DH and a friend and they had "cathead" biscuits at this Southern specialty restaurant - they are indeed the size of a cat's head. Did I eat the whole thing - yes. And I would do it again - it was delicious, but I have avoided the scale this week, lol!

carolehalston

Love, love, love biscuits. My mother made "cathead" biscuits every morning when I was a kid, back in the days when "bought" bread was a treat. Have not had chicken biscuits. I never have to worry about being tempted to eat biscuits during the summers in MN. For some reason, Minnesotans don't seem to know how to make good biscuits.

I remember that Susan made biscuits when she cooked one of her southern meals like fried chicken.

ChiSandy

Bummer about the pinkeye, Eric-hope it’s just temporary allergies.

Farewell dinner tonight after touring the Borghese Gallery, at Casa Valadier at the north end of Borghese Gardens. So much wine in me that rather than attempt to describe each dish, I’ll show the menu first:

About to charge my devices, catch a nap, shower and finish packing—my ride arrives at 7:30 for a 10:40 flight to JFK, then customs & immigration, change terminals, & fly home

Max_otto

Sandy,

I loved the Borghese gallery, such beautiful sculptures and paintings, I still see Appolo and Daphne which is one of my favorite Bernini sculptures. Great food as well.

Kathy

carolehalston

No cooking here tonight. We are invited to a friend's house for a steak dinner. I am bringing fresh Louisiana strawberries and pound cake. My friend has vanilla ice cream and Cool Whip. Dessert will be a version of strawberry shortcake. We're also bringing a couple of bottles of wine.

MinusTwo

We played dominoes for the first time in several months today. Someone brought the Hawaiian Sliders. Yummy. Someone made a pasta salad. I was going to take cole slaw, but the host (the husband of our dear friend who died a year ago) said he wanted to get a broccoli salad from Costco like his wife used to make. So I took fresh cantaloupe. Then he wasn't able to find the salad and he bought chocolate cake doughnuts. Someone brought poppy seed kolaches. One other sweet but I forgot what. WAY too much sugar.

MinusTwo

Oh and the excitement of the day - car wouldn't start when I got ready to go this afternoon. No click, no whine, nothing. Windows still worked & key fob worked. I really didn't think it was the battery, and besides that was only a year old. AAA gave me a choice between the battery check guy & a tow truck. Well how the hell am I supposed to know?

Eric - you would have loved the battery guy who showed up. of course it wouldn't jump & wasn't the battery. he said said the starter, got out a galvanized pipe & hit the starter. Voila - it started. Something about the vibrations. He said not to turn it off. Luckily I was able to get to the car repair shop before they closed and someone there brought me home. So I'm car-less for the weekend. Glad I didn't have any big plans.

illimae

Tonight was Parmesan crusted Cod, Quinoa and Broccoli. The cod was so good, I think it’s the beginning of a fish craving. DH is doing a Pork Roast tomorrow, yummy.

SpecialK

minus - ugh on the car! My friend just had hers towed to the garage for a dead batttery and the flatbed driver then backed into the front of her car (twice - doh!!!) as he tried to exit the parking lot. She is thinking she needs a karma adjustment. At least you got yummy sliders and dessert!

Illimae - I should eat more fish, I seem to only like cod battered and fried and in a fish taco... my California girl is showing, lol

illimae

specialk, if your fish must be in the form of a taco, so be it, more tacos for all! 😋

carolehalston

Minus, you gotta love the substitution of a chocolate cake for a broccoli salad! The dominoes potluck sounds very edible.

I plan to make a meatloaf with ground turkey breast for tonight. It's a WW recipe I've used in the past. The ingredients include a lot of finely minced mushrooms and green onions.

My decision this morning was to be between more yard work and a trip to the gym. My body is telling me, "Neither." I'm thinking I need a peaceful morning of doing this and that around the house before going to the nursing home to accompany my mother to bingo. I'll take her some strawberries, stemmed and sprinkled with sugar.

carolehalston

Some hours later, the meatloaf is assembled and ready to be cooked tonight. It was quite a messy prep, with some chopping and dicing in the food processor and on the cutting board. I combined the WW recipe with an Epicurious recipe.

Side will be cauliflower mash with small amt. of cream cheese and butter. I may attempt onion rings for dh in the air fryer. No temptation for me!

Lacey12

I so vicariously enjoyed the Roman buffets and meals posted by Sandy! And laughed thinking about the offerings that would be available at a social work conference....which, of course, would never be abroad! LOL

We continue to cluck with our chicken meals when not out. Several days ago I made a balsamic chicken toss with onions and mushrooms...becoming rather standard fare on our table, along with farro, a salad, and brussells sprouts, or asparagus. Last week, I suddenly came down with an intestinal problem, for two days, and now after all the alerts about ecoli and romaine lettuce, I wonder if I had a mildly related case. I called our grocery store and learned that they removed all their romaine lettuce, some of which I had already consumed. Ugh! Resorting to cuke salads now.

Tonight we are going out for a casual dinner with our neighbors/friends. The husband has been undergoing chemo treatment for his metastasized prostate cancer, and he looks so frail now, but continues to be such a strong fighter and participant in life, caring for their grands, singing in choruses he loves, traveling when able, etc. And we are fortunate to have so many good cancer treatment centers nearby.

We are a dog family again....caring for our granddog while DS2 and DDIL are on a short trip. Fortunately he is easy to have around, and the weather is decent for walks.....FINALLY! I really felt for those marathon runners who had such terrible weather conditions earlier this week.

Hope your car is an easy fix, Minus. And also hope that your eye is better, Eric.

I am sorting out what glasses I will get now that my vision has settled into what it will be post cataract surgery. The whole process has resulted in “dry eye", requiring constant artificial drops needed for clearest vision. Kind of annoying since I did not have that problem before, and I was hoping to be done with drops...and maybe glasses. The good news, I suppose is that I am not experiencing glare during night driving which was my main symptom prompting me to get the cataracts removed...that had been scary.

We are caught up in the NBA finals....and admittedly ambivalent about how far we hope our young, injured Celtics will go. Every round of playoffs gets ridiculously more expensive, and games conflict with many spring activities, graduations, etc., which have started up. It will be interesting. The games have been exciting tho.

Posting a few mundane meal pix from our kitchen table bringing us back to earth from Rome.

This last photo is of a delicious Cuban appetizer of shrimp over fried plantain discs with an avocado mix in the middle. We were at a restaurant we go to before shows, and this show was “On Your Feet", story of Gloria and Emilio Estefan, thus the Cuban app special. We passed on the Cuban entrees, but I had a delicious pork chop for my entree, and DH enjoyed his pork tacos....our escape from chicken.

MinusTwo

The Cuban shrimp appetizers look really interesting.

Lunch was a broccoli salad with dried cranberries & sunflower seed and several other kinds of mini veggie sticks (think cauliflower). Dinner will be deviled eggs & cole slaw. Hmmm, I have campari tomatoes that need to be used, and three avocados in the same position, and oh dear - an English cucumber. Maybe hold the cole slaw & just make a big salad. Dessert will be the rest of the cantaloupe I scored for $0.88 last week.

illimae

Pork Roast with boiled potatoes and creamy garlic Brussels sprouts

SpecialK

Yay for food pics!

Tonight DD and her new beau came for dinner, and some bass fishing in the ponds. We had cold shrimp with both remoulade and cocktail sauce and some smoked gouda, grapes, and glazed almonds for an app, followed by ribeyes, a green salad, corn on the cob and loaded baked potatoes. Lemon cupcakes for desert. We had fun watching some old home movies and the slide show from DH's military retirement. We also watched one from DD's college grad party - her brother couldn't attend because he was in finals up at college in Virginia so he made her a slideshow from birth to the present - it is a great compilation. He said his goal was to make everyone cry - he did an excellent job!

eric95us

An intermittent electrical connection can happen in a starter and the "whack it" is a time honored way to temporarily fix it. Since it happened once, it may (or may not) happen again soon. I wouldn't trust that starter.....

I haven't been cooking much but today, as usual, I'm making some sourdough bread.

My eye was feeling worse, so I went back to urgent care and this time they found something in my eye. The first NP did, I thought, a very thorough job looking for "something", so the object must have been hidden in the corner of my eye. The 2nd NP found it right away, got it out, looked around for more stuff but didn't find anything, prescribed an antibiotic/soothing eye drop and said I should see an ophthalmologist tomorrow.

The eye drops sure do cloud the vision.

Sandy, from what I can see, the food looks amazing....food porn for sure. :-)

SpecialK

eric - eeeks on the eye! Hope all foreign things have been found and it starts to feel better soon!

ChiSandy

Eric, thank goodness they got that thing out of your eye. Abx drops are a good idea--a corneal infection is no picnic. Wise to follow up.

Had a "starter adventure" with my '93 Taurus LX in Dec. 2001--as I attempted to leave a tollway oasis where I'd stopped after a gig. The tow truck guy explained that starters are rotors with little "brushes" and if one "bristle" breaks off and the rotor is at that spot when you try to restart the engine, it won't start. Hence the pipe-whack trick. My tow-truck driver used a wrench--started right back up. He told me it might never happen again, or it might happen again tomorrow. So I bought a new starter for $100, incl. labor. But 2 mos. later the A/C, thermostat and a bunch of other stuff failed--and it would have cost upward of $3K to fix; so I bought a 2002 Taurus SEL in cherry red (with an SHO engine), my midlife-crisis-mobile. "Ruby" croaked spectacularly in 2011 (giving me a good song about it in the process).

Lacey, I'd gladly give your "kitchen table" a Michelin star.

OK, folks--final food porn, airline edition. After a sleepless night followed by a very trying morning at the Rome airport, I flew Alitalia's Magnifica class (hybrid of business & first) to JFK. First will be the menu (theme was the food & wine of Calabria--"toe" of Italy's "boot") followed by the food pix.

First, I chose the broccoli flan, since I'd had eggplant the night before:

Next, the ziti, though they got the wines mixed up on the menu--they served me the white:

For my entree, I picked the "sea bass" (really branzino) because I didn't want chicken:

There was no side salad, but no worries. Here's the cheese plate:

Had plenty of sweets this trip, so chose the fruit for dessert, finishing my Aperol spritz:

Finally, before landing, a light antipasto with more fruit, and espresso:

Those little croquettes were deep-fried stuffed olives, and the meat was really spicy sopressata. The bread was garlic-rosemary foccaccia. Never before have I had such good food on a plane--almost as good as anything I ate while in Rome! (Sort of a bring-down to fly SW to Boston in a couple of weeks).

Yesterday it was back to the usual: I fried two eggs (olive oil & a dab of bacon grease), jamòn Serrano, and low-carb high-fiber toast. Dinner (ordered out) was fish & chips with slaw. Brunch today--broccoli quiche and mesclun salad. All yummy but not exotic enough to be photogenic.

illimae

Eric, sorry about the eye, hopefully it’s not too painful and you find relief very soon

Lacey, Specialk, ChiSandy, all the food looks and sounds delicious!

Today I made a pulled pork sandwich from leftovers and a simple cole slaw from purple and green cabbage that I normally use in salads. This was dinner as DH and I must be in bed by 5 and up at 11pm for a midnight bus call. I’ll drop DH off at the House of Blues for his tour and crawl back in bed when I get home.

auntienance

Yay for food porn, love it!

Last night was manicotti for DH, cannelloni for me with two sauces. Large lunch today at friends' (cold meats and chicken salad) including brownies and ice cream, so small dinner tonight of cheese omelets.

Eric, I'm so glad they found the foreign object - how miserable! Lacey, sorry about the dry eye - something I deal with every day. Such a pain to have to use eye drops multiple times a day.

We did get the garden cleaned up yesterday. It's still uncertain whether I'll plant many vegetables or not. The yield has been poor the last couple of years and we have a very good produce stand in town. I will probably plant beans and a couple of tomato plants and maybe a cucumber, but the rest of the beds might just be flowers. This cold spring has really dampened my gardening enthusiasm.

auntienance

Yay for food porn, love it!

Last night was manicotti for DH, cannelloni for me with two sauces. Large lunch today at friends' (cold meats and chicken salad) including brownies and ice cream, so small dinner tonight of cheese omelets.

Eric, I'm so glad they found the foreign object - how miserable! Lacey, sorry about the dry eye - something I deal with every day. Such a pain to have to use eye drops multiple times a day.

We did get the garden cleaned up yesterday. It's still uncertain whether I'll plant many vegetables or not. The yield has been poor the last couple of years and we have a very good produce stand in town. I will probably plant beans and a couple of tomato plants and maybe a cucumber, but the rest of the beds might just be flowers. This cold spring has really dampened my gardening enthusiasm.

eric95us

That was airline food???!!!???? Wow!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't know any airlines went to that much effort...... :-)