Two at the Table_Menu_Week of June 22 2014

First, a confession. You may have noticed that while we posted this week on Greek-Style Fish With Marinated Tomatoes with Cous Cous, Blackberry Chicken with Salad, and Cheddar-Cheese Grits with Spicy Black Beans, we did not post on the Baja-Style Rosemary Chicken Skewers with the Avocado and Grapefruit Salad. The reason for this is quite simple: we totally bailed on making dinner that night. We both got home on the late side and were completely exhausted. Rather than plod through making dinner, we just ordered in. And you know what? That’s OK. Part of why we can make dinner at home most nights of the week is we accept that we’re not going to be able to do it every night, even on all the nights when we plan to. We make sure that cooking never becomes just another task, but rather something that we’re excited to do as soon as we walk through the door. If the passion is not there, we figure, why bother?

With that out of the way, we have an interesting week ahead. We have another Yankee game Sunday afternoon, and it will be a full day: a number retiring ceremony at 11:00, the Old Timers’ Day game at noon, and the regularly scheduled Yankee game at 2:00. If we do have dinner after six hours at the ball park, we want it to be quick and simple. Enter the leftover Cheddar-Cheese Grits with Spicy Black Beans from last week.

We’re still determined to try the  Baja-Style Rosemary Chicken Skewers with the Avocado and Grapefruit Salad, and since we bought all the ingredients last week, it’s on the menu for Monday night. We’re going to pair this with a 2008 Verdejo from Naia winery in Spain.

Tony has a photography class on Tuesday night, so Kim opted for a simple dinner: hummus with an English cucumber and, since it will keep for a couple of weeks, the remaining endive from the Apple, Fennel and Endive Salad With Feta we had the week before last.

Wednesday night is a new recipe for an old favorite: Baked Orzo with Shrimp, Tomato Sauce, and Feta. We had some orzo pasta in the cupboard, so this is a good way to use that up. We’re getting groceries, and thus the shrimp, Sunday evening, so the shrimp will go in the freezer for a couple of days. We’ve done this before and the shrimp has always come out fine. Fro this dish, we bought a bottle of Varada do Conde Vinho Verde, a white wine from Portugal.

For Thursday, we thought it would be fun to make grilled cheese sandwiches, so we’re making a great recipe we’ve tried once before: Grilled Fontina, Mushroom, and Sage Sandwiches. This is a very easy dish that tastes amazing – earth and cheesy and savory and that pairs well with wine or beer. This time, we chose beer: Dogfish Head’s 60-Minuite IPA.

We thought we would make pasta Friday night and found a recipe that will let us use more of the fresh sage we purchased this week as well as some penne we had in the pantry and some peas we had in the freezer. (Somehow, it always seems like we have half a box of penne in the pantry and half a box of frozen peas in the freezer!) The dish is Penne with Asparagus, Sage and Peas, but we might add some mushrooms if we have any left over from the grilled cheese sandwiches. We’ll pair this with a white Bordeaux from Chateau Lamothe de Haux. (We should point out that all of the wines mentioned with this week’s menu were purchased on Fresh Direct and all we’re less than $16.)

We have tickets to the ballet Saturday night, so we’ll probably end up having dinner out. And that wraps up another week of planning for Two at the Table!