My First Night - And How Exciting it Was!

On Wednesday, 2 days ago, I took a shopping trip to Whole Foods with Melody (My 9 months old). I remembered a time when I visited a friend of mine and she made me lunch. She is a vegetarian and made me some of the yummiest dishes ever! I haven't forgotten them so I tried to re-create what I remembered the dish having. One of the dishes was a kidney bean salad with red onions and sweet potatoes. She also made a roasted fennel salad with romaine lettuce, goat cheese and some kind of fruity dressing.

So, here was my version of them, with some added twists!

Black beans cooked with some salt, and vegetable stock.

One sweet potato baked, no salt or butter. Diced.

1/2 Red onion sauteed with olive oil and garlic

Anne's Papaya Poppyseed dressing (To taste)

Fresh fennel, stems cut off, sliced in halves then sliced into pieces. Roasted in oven with olive oil, salt and pepper

About 1/4 cup goat cheese from Whole Foods

1 head of Romaine lettuce

-Then instead of just leaving it at that, I threw in a ton of other veggies into the oven such as eggplant, red peppers, and crimini mushrooms. The eggplant gave it so much flavor and texture!

I also tossed in some of that papaya dressing.

I was so proud of myself for cooking these dishes just from memory, and in my opinion they came out better! Fennel is my new favorite vegetable!!!!

The black beans were not as firm as the kidney beans as I probably overcooked them. But instead of getting the full bean texture, the beans somewhat mashed together to make kind of a refried bean effect, which for some reason tasted so good with the sweet potatoes and onions! I loved it.

What a great way to start out. I was so happy that I couldn't wait for the next day to learn a whole new recipe.

Love,

Wendy