Bust

Menu: Broiled Tilapia, Quinoa-Parsnip Rosti, Buttery Snow peas with Thyme, Strawberry Pie

Lessons learned:

1. Never, ever go to the grocery store without lots of snacks.
2. Cooked vegetables are not even a little bit amenable to peeling or grating.
3. Little pancakes are better than big pancakes in every way.
4. I need to learn to make some dipping sauces.

I don't think there was a single part of tonight's dinner that went as I hoped.  Ugh...

First we made our twice-weekly grocery shopping trip this afternoon.  Sophie skipped lunch, so her usual grocery store snack was unusually important to her.  She seriously squealed and cried the entire time because I wasn't feeding her Life cereal fast enough.  Thanks to my son for only trying to climb out of the cart three times and only losing his shoe once.

On to the cooking: quinoa and I haven't gotten along so well in the kitchen.  I've overcooked it.  I've undercooked it.  I can't seem to serve it in such a way that someone besides me will eat it.  And yet I persist.  Maybe it's because quinoa seems like the cool kid of the whole grains, the one where you can tell people, "it's pronounced keen-wa."  Or maybe it's the challenge -- I just can't accept that I don't have the cooking skills to turn out some edible keen-wa.

Anyway, when I was growing up, my mom made these really simple but fantastic potato pancakes called rostis.  You shred potatoes, toss them with butter and salt and pepper, and spread them out in a big frying pan.  When they're brown on one side, you do a big FLIP and slide the pancake back into the pan for the other side to cook.  So when I saw a recipe for rostis made with parsnips and quinoa in HTCEV, I had to try them and I decided this was the night.

I cooked my quinoa.  Not mushy, not crunchy... so far, so good.  Cooked the parsnips, too, according to the recipe.

That's when the trouble started.  The directions say to peel and grate them after cooking.  Well, neither of those things worked because the parsnips were too soft.  First I tried using a cheese grater: no luck, so I broke out the grating tool on my food processor.  That didn't work either, which meant I had just dirtied up my big old food processor bowl for no reason.  So I just switched to the regular old chopping blade and threw the parsnips in, skin and all.  Mixed them up with the quinoa, and decided at the last minute that it would be a good idea to throw in a little cheese.  That's probably why, when the pancake was in the big skillet and it was time to flip it, only about 2/3 of it came off the pan.

So, no rosti.  Just hash.

BUT.  I think this would work out just fine if I made little pancakes instead of one big one.  The kids would be more likely to eat them, and I'd have no trouble flipping them.  Served with a dollop of something yummy on top, I bet they would be tasty.

While I was messing with the parsnips, I threw some seasoning on the tilapia and got it into the oven.  It ended up... fine.  It was a bit watery, like it had been frozen.  From now on, I'm only getting my fish at a fish market, even if it means an extra trip.

I also had the snow peas in the pan and forgot that I had planned to saute them gently with butter.  I turned the heat up too high and burned many of them.  So I just sighed and dumped a little bit of soy sauce on them.  And opened a beer.

As you can see, John isn't home for dinner.  It's a busy time for him at work, so I told him he was excused from dinner for the next week if he wanted to be.  But the table feels a lot emptier without him.

There may be a bright spot, though.  A big, bright red spot in honor of Pi day.  During all the dinner fuss, I managed to pre-bake an old store-bought pie crust I found in my freezer and fill it with strawberries and strawberry jam.  Homemade whipped cream is on the way.  I still have hope.