on a SIDEnote...or Bamboozled!

Pretty jam-packed weekend here in Dishville.  We spent a lot of the weekend planning out the garden and figuring out what we wanted to plant and such.  Went ahead and took a chance planting some lettuces (mesclun, microgreens, and spinach) and also a couple rows of onions.  I see that the weather later this week is supposed to be kind of sketchy so we might end up planting again.  It seems that about 3/4 of our grocery list is usually produce, so it's going to be a huge help having freshies on hand.

The meatball dish is one from Wife's childhood.  Her mom used to make porcupine meatballs with mashed potates and cheesy cauliflower.  I omitted the mashed potatoes and turned the cauliflower into a puree that also has leeks and parmesan.  It was pretty good, the meatballs had a lot of caramelized onion, salt and peps, garlic, parsley, and some balsamic vinegar.  I would definitely recommend substituting some pureed cauliflower in place of mashed tates, they are better for you (I didn't use any milk or butter, just a glug of olive oil at the end ) and it's good to mix up side dishes once in a while (so you don't find yourself saying "what kind of potato do you want?"). the middle photo is sunday morning breakfast (we ate it raw, like wild hyenas!).  We picked up some sausages from Cetaks (a local meat purveyor).  They were pretty good, a little bland, but the texture was right.  I just threw in the strawberry photo for pretty.  While it's a little early in the season, they were still not totally cardboardy.

I also made some tostadas last night, but I've posted tostada pics a million times.  What did make this time different, however, was the fact that I bought my meat from the mexican grocery.  We were out scooting around on saturday and Wife yelled out "cokes!"  In dish language, that means, "Hey, we are going by the mexican grocery. Let's go in and get some non-high fructose coca cola in glass bottles that we will recycle after we are done drinking them!"  So we did.  We also picked up some banana leaves (for making pibil) and as I was walking by the meat counter, I couldn't help but notice the excellent chorizo they had for sale.  So I bought some...and used it for tostadas.  I really would encourage going to ethnic markets.  A lot of times, their meat (especially in the case of kosher and halal regulations) and produce is of higher quality than big supermarkets.  I think that I paid around 3 bucks for a pound of chorizo, which was pretty close to my version.  until next time...

DISH recommends:

A Bamboo cutting board.  yeah, yeah.  I was all about end grain maple blah blah blah for a while, but I really have grown to love my bamboo cb.  It's very, very strong and easier on your knives than other woods.  Plus, bamboo is sustainable and that's something I'm totally down with.  I couldn't find my exact model, but this is a good one, and it's on sale!