Two at the Table_Menu_Week of September 7, 2014

We have a very busy week ahead, with Tony needing to fit his full-time job around four full days of training and Kim going all out as well. (We’re so busy in fact that we had to make all sorts of edits to the menu to make sure that we will use our time as efficiently as possible.) That said, we plan on finishing very strong with a special dinner on Saturday night.

We went to the Yankee game Sunday afternoon, so, as usual, we’re going to just have snacks for dinner. We have some cheese and crackers, plus hummus, not to mention a little bit of Rachel Khoo’s Sun-Dried Tomato & Ricotta Tapenade, from her “Sweet and Savoury Pates” cookbook, left over from last week.

On Monday night, we’ll have leftovers from the Eggplant and Three Cheese Calzone, a recipe we found in Deb Perelman’s Smitten Kitchen cookbook, that we also made last week. The calzone was delicious the first time and promises to be just as good the second!

On Tuesday night, we’ll have steak sandwiches, using some of the grilled hanger steak that we made for our Steak and Martini night this past Friday.

Our good friend Lynee, who is also a faithful follower of our blog, asked us just last night “Do you ever cheat on making dinner?” The answer is yes, we do, sometimes. Two of those times will be Wednesday and Thursday. We’ve ordered a roasted chicken from Fresh Direct, along with two pre-made sides, and that will be our dinner for those two nights. We’d prefer to make dinner from scratch, but it’s just not in the cards this week. Plus, we would also prefer to remain “one couple enjoying dinner together” and not become “one couple stressing out over dinner together because we’re writing a blog!”

We’ll probably order in on Friday, but we will definitely make dinner on Saturday. We plan to make another day trip to Greenport, Long Island and to hit the Freehold Fish Market so that we can buy all the seafood we’ll need to make Tyler Florence’s Paella with Seafood, Chicken, and Chorizo. We know we’ll find lots of other tasty things at the farm stands that line the road we take home, so check back next week to see what things we’ll make with those ingredients. We’re also going to stock up on Oktoberfest beer, so check back in during the month of October as we plan our annual Oktoberfest dinner and beer tasting, which will feature home-made pretzels; sage rubbed pork chops with apples and cabbage; and other fun stuff too!