Book Club Dinner (and "Easy" Beans)

We hosted our couple's book club on Saturday with a little Mexican meal. We've been doing this book club with three of our closet couple friends for the past five years, and the person that picks the book hosts the dinner and makes something that matches the "theme" of what we're reading. This time around, hubby picked God's Middle Finger, so we decided to make a little Mexican meal to accompany us on our literary journey into the "lawless heart of the Sierra Madre."

Bryan whipped up a big batch of homemade chips that we served with guacamole, followed by flank steak topped with "magic sauce" and pork tamales with tomatillo sauce + beautiful rice and super easy beans...

I love these beans, and surprisingly (they're pretty spicy and feel a little "grown-up") so does Audrey. But I have to admit they are a bit of a cheat (maybe I should call them "cheater beans" instead of "easy beans"), as I use canned pintos and pre-made pico de guillo as the base.

I know, I know...

Before I share the recipe, I have to say that Mexican food is my favorite cuisine to make in the spring and summer -- it's easy, incredibly yummy and, well...(for lack of a better adjective) fresh. + there are the margaritas, which honestly might be the real impetus for all of this. I'm just sayin.

Easy (cheater) Mexican Beans (serves 6):

• 3 pieces of bacon
• 1/2 container of pico de guillo
• 2 cans of organic pinto beans
• 1 can of light beer
• 1/2 cup organic chicken broth
• kosher salt + pepper to taste

fry the bacon, remove from pan and coarsely chop, reserve bacon grease and move pan off the heat.

Once the grease has cooled a bit, add the pico de guillo (be careful when adding as the grease will splatter) and return to medium high heat. Saute the pico until the onions are lightly browned.

Add the beans and the chopped bacon to the sauteed pico and stir together over medium high heat for a few more minutes.

Add the beer and the chicken broth to the bean mixture, turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil for about 7 minutes.

Turn heat to lowest setting, cover beans and let cook for about 30 minutes. Be sure to check beans frequently, and if the liquid gets too low add a little more chicken broth. You'll want the beans to be thick with a little liquid but not soupy.

Add kosher salt and pepper to taste (I also like to add just a bit of fajita seasoning.)

Because Complicated Is Overrated...

For me, Spring always represents the start of simple, easy food...

Our dinner routine in these months usually consists of throwing some meat or chicken on the grill or pulling together a little pasta and then roasting some veggies or tossing together simple salads (I live for salad.) Luckily the girlies are down with this plan. They especially love (now after much consternation and cajoling...I don't give up easily friends) roasted asparagus and cauliflower and are nuts for lightly steamed broccoli drizzled with a little butter and lemon juice.

When we were at the beach last week my friend Julie (who is a master of this easy, fresh cooking) threw together some potatoes that seemed not only ridiculously simple but were literally the best potatoes I've ever had...sounds dramatic I know, but it's true...

So I set out to recreate them last night to serve with some grilled steak and (yep) roasted asparagus. They were fantastic. Definitely going into the regular rotation.

I would highly recommend giving them a whirl this weekend!

Roasted Potatoes with Feta Cheese:

• Medium Red Potatoes (1-2 per person)
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• Olive Oil
• Feta Cheese
• Rosemary

Pre-heat oven to 400

Pierce potatoes several times with a fork and put into a microwave safe boil. Toss with a generous amount of olive oil, kosher salt and pepper. Cook on high heat for about 8 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Transfer potatoes to a cookie sheet and transfer to pre-heated oven for about 15 minutes or until the outside of the potatoes start to crisp up a bit.

Once slightly crispy remove from oven and make a little slit in the top of each potato, smashing open a bit with a fork, put a good amount of crumbled feta cheese, chopped rosemary and more salt and pepper in each opening and put back in the oven for 5 minutes.

Before serving, smash the potatoes open a bit more and stir around in the olive oil that has collected on the bottom of the cookie sheet.

In Praise of Al Fresco Dining...

I complain a lot about the Texas heat.

A lot...

But with a warm climate comes especially lovely Spring and Fall weather. (And often winter -- we've been known to have 70 degree days in December...it's true.) Otherwise known as ample opportunities to eat outside.

Food tastes better eaten outside...it just does. And somehow, my otherwise unruly-at-meal-time kiddos seem to mellow out when we dine in our backyard. Maybe they're blissed out by the chirping birds or maybe they're just vibing off Bryan's and my decidedly more mellow demeanor. Either way, it's a game changer.

Last Saturday we had some of our dearest friends over for a little al fresco dinner. We served that super easy orecchiette with sausage, asparagus and spinach + one of my favorite "salads" -- a tomato hollowed out and stuffed with goat cheese and honey and then baked served over some lightly dressed arugula.

A perfect outside meal for sure...



our little friend Gracie surveying the meal...

Cooking Inspiration (And A Shameful Secret...)

I’m about to admit something I’m not proud of.

When I was in college (and clearly not very smart) and would watch a movie in which the characters smoked a lot (say Next Stop Wonderland), I would then promptly smoke. Usually Parliaments.

Now just forget I admitted that….but there was a point in sharing this shameful secret. The same thing happens to the girlies (minus the gross cigarettes, of course) when they watch shows/movies heavy in cooking. A screening of Ratatouille always sends Audrey tearing through the kitchen drawers for various implements, whipping up a potion, the ingredients too gross to repeat here.

Recently we’ve been on a bit Little Bear kick (my girlies are addicted to that show), and as such, the girls are inspired to recreate all of Mother and Little Bear's various creations – the flying flapjacks, the cupcakes, and most recently, the homemade lemonade (there's an entire episode dedicated to making lemonade.)



We happened to get a dozen lemons in our co-op box last week, which came in handy when, after a Saturday afternoon viewing of said lemonade episode, they declared they wanted to whip up a big batch.

Out came the little juicer we received as a wedding gift a decade ago (and have used approximately three times.) Squeezing the lemons was infinitely thrilling to little Millie... We then added some cold water and sugar in the raw to the lemon juice. Again inspired by Little Bear, Audrey wanted to instead use mint and honey, which as tempting and lovely as it seemed, I nixed, as I couldn’t bear to waste all those lovely lemons if she didn’t like it (and there was a very high probability that she wouldn't...)

It was incredibly tasty and will be a perfect base for homemade popsicles once the weather gets a smidge warmer.

So, What inspires your kiddos to cook?

Big Chocolate Cake (Or Breaking a Rut)

Valentine’s Day was my “D-Day.”

See as of yesterday, (as you’ve probably surmised from all the posts about snacking and frozen yogurt and whatnot) I still hadn’t fully shaken off my cooking “rut”, otherwise known as my food funk, the stalemate with my kitchen, or my completely culinarily uninspired period of time…

So I drew a line in the proverbial sand and vowed, inspiration be damned, to cook something…anything (ideally somewhat elaborate and perhaps even a bit challenging) for Valentine’s Day. Really pulling out of the funk, dusting off the cookbooks and making something fantastic for Bryan and the girlies, seemed like the ultimate expression of love, no?

I decided first on the dessert -- it was Valentine’s Day after all. Specifically, inspired by Ruth Riechls’ ultimate expression of love through insane baking in her excellent memoir, "Comfort Me With Apples", I decided to make “Big Chocolate Cake”… with Audrey of course. And truthfully the cake killed two birds with one stone, allowing me to cross “make a chocolate cake from scratch” of my “list”, where it’s been sitting stagnate for a year and a half. A win/win all around.

From the name alone, I knew this project might be a bit of a bear, and I had a whole dinner to make too (more on that later), so we started working on the cake early in the day. Which turned out to be a good thing, as we were working slowly (+ sneaking in plenty of Olympics viewing, breaking for Bryan’s famous quesadillas + taking in a tivo’d Project Runway)… Let's just say Audrey placed the final raspberry on the cake at approximately 5:00 pm, right before I started dinner.

Friends, let me warn you, this cake isn’t for the faint of heart. There’s nothing especially “healthy” about this bad boy – case in point, it contains three sticks of butter and six eggs in the batter alone, but I view great desserts the same way I do eating meat lately -- we eat it less of it and make the best we can possibly afford. To that end, we used great chocolate and all organic ingredients.

I can honestly say it was a masterpiece.

Ruth Reichl’s Big Chocolate Cake adapted from "Comfort Me With Apples"

A couple of notes…this recipe makes a big cake and we were only feeding four, so rather than tinker with the amounts, I used ½ the batter for a single layer round cake and used the rest for cupcakes. Since my round cake pan was a little deeper than the sheet pans that the cooking times are intended for, I had to cook it closer to 45-50 minutes and I turned the heat down to 325 for the last 15 minutes.

Ingredients:

For Cake Layers:

• 1 ½ cups boiling water
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• ¾ cup whole milk
• 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 3 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 ½ cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 ½ cups granulated sugar
• 6 large eggs

For Frosting:

• 5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
• 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup whipped cream cheese
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 ½ cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Make Cake Layers:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 13-by-9-by-2-inch baking pans and line bottoms of each with wax paper. Butter paper and dust pans with flour, knocking out excess.

Whisk together the boiling water and the cocoa in a bowl until smooth, then whisk in the milk and vanilla. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.

Beat together the butter and sugars in the large bowl of a standing electric mixer until pale and fluffy, then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, beat in flour and cocoa mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture (the batter may look curdled).

Divide batter between pans, smoothing tops. Bake in the middle of the oven until a tester comes out clean and layers begin to pull away from the sides of pans, 25 to 35 minutes. Invert cakes on racks, remove wax paper, and cool completely.

Make Frosting:

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, stirring until melted. Cool to room temperature.

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy.

Add remaining ingredients and beat until well combined.

Assemble Cake:

Put one cake layer, rounded side up, on a cake plate and spread with 11/4 cups frosting. Top with another cake layer, rounded side up, and spread top and sides with remaining frosting.

A Breakthrough + Something Lovely

Amy and Ann's lovely new calendar

So I'm realizing that most of my tales of new food attempts (and rejections) over here revolve around Audrey. I rarely talk about how Millie responds to our culinary adventures, but I think most of that is due to the fact that she's only two, and I tend to write-off most of her food pickiness to evolving taste buds.

When Audrey was two she was a little foodie rock star. Her favorite dish was crab claws in butter and garlic. Needless to say she evolved...backward. So I tend not to put too much stock in Millie's current food preferences (or rejections) knowing that they will likely change.

That said, I am completely reveling in her current absolute favorite food. Wait for it...

Roasted asparagus.

The child eats it like candy. She can't get enough. She calls it green beans, so really she doesn't even know what she's eating, but no matter. It's a beautiful thing. Truly.

Now onto pretty things. My friend Amy, along with her talented partner and crime Ann, has just added an incredibly lovely calendar to their shop. A perfect Christmas gift for all your foodie friends. Take a peek!

Happy weekend. Cook something fab!

What I'm *Not* Eating...

While we've definitely been eating well (fresh local veggies, homemade meals, organic meat), it's possible I've been eating perhaps... a little too well. There's been an awful lot of indulging of late, so I bit the bullet and decided to team up with my cousin Erin on a 14 day "mini detox".

We're currently on day five of not consuming any alcohol, dairy, sugar, caffeine, red meat, processed foods, flour, gluten and soy, and it hasn't been as bad as I feared. I'm not ever really hungry, as it's easy to stay full on the things we can eat like brown rice, veggies and fruit, raw nuts, organic chicken and pork, fish and oatmeal.

But I am getting a bit bored, and I'm missing cheese dreadfully...

My biggest challenge has been how to work the detox into our family eating without letting the girls know that I'm doing it. Regardless of how healthy my motivations are, I don't want to introduce either of them to anything that remotely feels like a "diet" for fear of accelerating the body image, eating disorder nightmare that they'll eventually encounter in one form or another.

So far it's been very easy to explain why I'm not having dessert, as I want the girls to know those things aren't necessarily healthy (although indulging in a quality, homemade dessert occasionally is certainly a "healthy" way to eat) but the dairy/bread questions are a little harder. I've avoided most probing by serving us all the same meal at night, and luckily many of our go-to meals (white beans with brown rice, chicken with veggies) are totally detox friendly.

Now I head into the weekend and bigger challenges -- it's always harder for me to avoid goodies on the weekend. So wish me luck and let me live vicariously through you...

What are you cooking this weekend?

Weekend Food...

Despite a full and fun weekend (or maybe because of it) we didn't cook much of anything beyond some homemade cornbread and some comically cursed brownies (think forgetting the egg, then forgetting to turn on the oven and wondering why after 35 minutes the brownies were totally raw...)

We did have an excellent Sunday Dinner at lovely cousin Erin and boyfriend Ben's house. Not only was it incredibly tasty, but both girls LOVED it...cleaned their plates, ate every. single. bite. and then asked for more. It was a huge, huge win friends.

The Menu:

Chicken Adobo -- recipe below
Simple Parmesan risotto
Sauteed green beans with pine nuts

Chicken Adobo (adapted from Serious Eats)

serves 4

• 6 boneless chicken thighs with no skin
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 10 whole peppercorns
• 1 whole head garlic
• 2 bay leaves

Separate the cloves of garlic from each other and smash them lightly with the flat side of a knife to easily remove the skins. Add them with the rest of the ingredients—the chicken should be half-submerged—to a heavy pot. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes, then uncover and continue cooking until the chicken is tender, turning the pieces occasionally.

If desired, remove the chicken pieces and reduce the sauce to a thicker consistency, adding the chicken pieces back in near the end to reheat. Remove the bay leaves and serve.

p.s. there's a great Michael Pollen article in NYT magazine this Sunday about the rise of our obsession with cooking shows, but our decline in actual cooking...

Collaborative Cooking, More Leftovers Love and Some Recipes

I love collaborative cooking -- cramming into the kitchen with friends (especially if their cooking skills surpass mine, which is definitely the case with two of my dearest friends, Julie and Tim) drinking wine, bumping into each other and chatting while everyone works toward the shared goal of enjoying a lovely meal together... of creating a memory.

Our Saturday evening birthday dinner for my friend Achlee was one of these nights. Bryan made his famous fried shrimp and homemade chips and salsa; I whipped up some yummy sides (the guacamole, mango salsa, beautiful rice + spicy black beans and a cabbage/jicama slaw) and threw together a simple marinade of canola oil, cilantro, lime, Ancho chili powder and a jalapeno for the tilapia, which our friends Julie and Tim then expertly cooked.

We set up a little build your own taco bar on the island, drank lots of homemade margaritas and then finished everything off with Julie’s perfect chocolate cake.

If it had ended there, it would have been more than enough food happiness, but it turned out to be the meal that kept on giving. Sunday morning, leftover tortillas and queso fresco were scrambled up with a few eggs and served alongside the black beans – quick migas. The beans surfaced again the following day combined with the remainder of the beautiful rice and topped with the cabbage slaw and Bryan’s salsa for easy veggie tacos. And each of those meals was just as yummy as the first one.

Here are a couple of the recipes should you want to mimic this at home!

Bryan’s Homemade Salsa
This is a sweeter cilantro based salsa…one of our favorites!

• 1 bunch cilantro (tops plus 1/2 of the stems)
• ¾ large sweet onion (preferably a Vidalia)
• 1 poblano roasted on the grill and peeled
• 5-7 medium jalapenos de-seeded
• 28 oz can Muir Glen organic fire roasted whole tomatoes
• ½ Lime squeezed
• 1 ½ tsp salt

This makes A LOT of salsa… A. Lot. So you could easily half the recipe. We like the texture best if you blend in a food processor, as the blender tends to make the salsa too “mushy”.


Cabbage and Jicama Slaw

• ½ head of green cabbage -- shredded
• 1 medium jicama – peeled and cut into matchsticks
• ¼ cup cilantro -- finely chopped
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• ½ teaspoon hot pepper sauce
• Juice of one small lime
• Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Combine the above ingredients in a bowl and refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving. I added a bit more hot sauce, as I like this with a bite…it was just as good the next day!

Mango Salsa

Amidst all the hoopla of the weekend, we did manage to eke out one home cooked meal. Tired from our little road trip, I didn't want to try to make anything too extravagant for Sunday dinner, so I had Bryan throw some chicken from Whole Foods on the grill (maybe it's psychological, but I think organic, free range, hormone free chicken tastes so. much. better. than conventional chicken... I'm just saying.)

While he was grilling, I made a quick pot of beautiful rice, this time adding slivered almonds, and threw together my mom's famous mango salsa, since I had all of the ingredients on hand. This is incredibly easy and is good with chicken, pork, fish tacos, or on its on as a little summer salad.

Mango "Salsa"
Serves 4

Mix together the following in a medium size bowl and let sit in the refrigerator for one hour before serving.

• 1 large ripe Mango -- diced
• 1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes -- quartered
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
• juice from one small lime
• sea salt + pepper to taste

I also like to top with a little crumbled feta, goat or queso fresco, depending on what I'm serving. Alongside last night's chicken and rice, I went with goat cheese.

Audrey totally dug the chicken, but sadly refused the beautiful rice and mango salsa, and instead had a piece of corn on the cob and some orechiette with parmesan... Oh well.

Weekend Food

Sadly, there won't be a lot of cooking around our place this weekend. We're headed to a block party at the museum tonight and to an all-day birthday/house cooling party tomorrow + we have a fridge full of leftovers to plow through.

Funny, a few months ago a couple of days out of the kitchen would have been a relief, but now I'm a bit sad...I always look forward to weekend cooking.

So let me live vicariously through you. What are you whipping up this weekend?

In other news, my Friday post is up on Renegade Bus. Go pick some berries this weekend and then put them on top of Alice Water's 1234 cake!

Alice Water’s 1234 Cake with Lemon Curd and Blueberries

Adapted from “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters

Yield One nine-inch, two-layer cake

Ingredients

• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup milk
• 3 cups cake flour (sift and then measure)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsweetened butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
  

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 9-inch baking pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.

Stir baking powder and salt into cake flour.
In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the four egg yolks one at a time. Add the vanilla to the mixture.

Add the flour mixture and milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour. Stir just until the flour is incorporated.

In another bowl, whisk egg whites to soft peaks. Stir one third of the egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.

Let cake cool and then spread lemon curd between the two layers. Serve with slightly crushed fresh, local blueberries and loosely whipped cream.

Beautiful Rice

We had a great dinner Saturday with our new friends Lucia and Peter and their adorable girlies Eva and Felicity.

There was guacamole with feta + Bryan's "homemade" tortilla chips (he cuts up corn tortillas and fries them in our little backyard fryer -- not so healthy but so yummy.) He also turned out a mighty fine green chili chicken casserole. A few of you have asked for this recipe, but he literally does it different every single time, so he's promised to work up an actual recipe to share soon!

I had a particular weakness for the homemade margaritas and the beautiful rice though...It was my first time to make this rice; it's my dear friend Kristie's recipe, and friends, it's easy and incredibly, incredibly good.

The rice is a perfect (and obvious) accompaniment for Mexican food, but I think you could replace some (not all) of the cilantro with more spinach and serve it along side any number of things. I'll be adding this to our regular repertoire for sure!

Beautiful Rice (or Arroz Verde)

• 1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro
• 1 cup packed fresh spinach
• 1 1/4 cups homemade or organic chicken broth ( my favorite is pacific organic free range)
• 1 1/4 cups organic skim milk
• 1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt
• 2 TBS unsalted butter
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups organic long grain rice
• 1/4 minced onion
• 1 clove minced garlic

Put the cilantro, spinach, and broth in a blender and puree, add milk and salt and blend until combined.

Heat the butter and olive oil in a heavy medium-sized pan, when butter is melted, add the rice and saute 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the onion and garlic and saute 1 minute longer.

Add the blender mix, stir well, bring to a boil. Turn to very low heat, cover and cook for 20 min
Stir carefully and cook for another 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes until ready to serve.

Weekend Food

Scenes from last month's White Rock Local Market

We’ve got a few fun foodie activities planned this weekend...

Tonight we're having neighbors over to splash in the baby pool and throw some organic, grass fed burgers on the grill + make an orzo salad with tomato, feta cheese and basil.

Tomorrow we’re having some new friends (fun!) over for dinner and are thinking of making Bryan’s green chili chicken enchilada casserole + Mexican beans and my friend Kristie’s famous “beautiful rice”… It’s so good! I’ll share the recipe on Monday.

But we’re especially excited to hit up the monthly White Rock Local Market tomorrow morning. Check out my piece on Renegade Bus* about the market and be sure to stop by if you live in Dallas!

So, what are you cooking this weekend??

* I'm going to be writing about local food each Friday on Renegade Bus!

Five Failures, One Success and A Really Good Meal

Sunday dinner with my lovely cousin and her boyfriend Ben has become a bit of a ritual. They’re avid cooks and equally passionate about tackling new recipes and eating local/sustainable, so it’s especially fun to cook and eat together.

It was a team effort, with Bryan grilling the sausages for my pasta as well as some lemons for Erin’s salad, which was a great combo of arugula, pine nuts, shaved Campo De Montalban (we’re loving that stuff) and a simple dressing of olive oil, a little champagne vinegar, some lemon juice, salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar.

For dessert I made a strawberry rhubarb crumble -- it was my first time to cook with rhubarb, so I was a smidge nervous, but I have to say it was incredibly easy and turned out pretty freakin yummy (I started with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen and then added some brown sugar and oats for the crumble…) Next time I think I’ll go wild and omit the strawberries; I’m living on the edge here people, completely surrendering to the perfect tartness that is rhubarb.



In Audrey news, she tried five new foods this weekend with surprisingly little resistance.

Her foodie adventures and reactions as follows:

• A bit of grilled lemon (above) -- Hated it.
• Homemade hummus on some baked pita – Hated it.
• A piece of drunken goat cheese – Hated it.
• A bit of local mozzarella from Mozzarella Company -- I think she would have normally liked it, but it came out of a tomato mozzarella salad, so it was infused with some olive oil, basil, tomato and a bit of vinegar, thus – Hated it.
• A bit of rhubarb crisp w/ice cream (I'm determined that she'll love fruit crisp) – Hated it.
• A bowl of wheat fettuccini topped with shaved parmesan and mild Italian sausage – Loved it, but this wasn’t a stretch for her at all, so I’m not sure it counts.

Tomorrow, I’ll share a few recipes!

Sprouted Kitchen + What Are You Cooking?

image by hugh forte for sprouted kitchen

Words can not describe how gorgeous + perfect this site is (spotted via kristina, who, by the way, authored this week's blogger's favorites over on SL)... I'm planning to attempt these carrot cake cookie "wiches" this week-end. Audrey will probably shun them, but no matter, I'll just eat them all myself.

image by hugh forte for sprouted kitchen

In other weekend food news, we're having a little picnic with friends this evening, and Audrey and I have been planning what we'll pack all week. There's such an art to a good picnic; I try to pack things that are easy to eat outside and that hold up well to the heat, but I also want some special treats, some sort of homemade sweet or fun adult beverage...

that cheese...audrey's picnic dream -- image of philippe stark's (of course) picnic via t magazine

I think we've settled on the following, but we'll see how things evolve as the day progresses:

• Sunbutter sandwiches on whole wheat bread (more on Sunbutter later...it truly is incredibly yummy)
• A block of that Campo De Montalban
• Plums
• Homemade hummus and baked pita chips
• Tomato mozzarella salad
• Homemade oatmeal/dark chocolate cookies
• Sparkling lemonade for the kiddos
• Lillet blanc for the grown-ups

Tomorrow morning we're headed to a new community "farmer's" market that I'm incredibly excited about...The vendors include local cheese makers, bakers + chocolatiers, farmers (meat + veggies) and local artists and artisians. It's small, and this is the first weekend, so if you live in the Dallas area be sure to go support it. I'll report back Monday with our finds.

Finally we have an especially yummy Sunday dinner planned: locally made whole-wheat fettuccine with roasted asparagus, sweet Italian sausage, cherry tomatoes and goat cheese. My goal is to get the girlies to try one bite of the dish in its final form, and I'll of course have a back-up plate of pasta with sausage and Parmesan only for when the gagging and crying inevitably commences... fingers crossed.

So, what are you cooking this weekend??