I’ve never been a fan of tomato sauce. Oh, I can eat it, but if I had my druthers, I’d be eating my pasta tossed with fresh tomatoes rather than tomatoes that had been cooked down into a sauce.

A few years back, on an excursion to San Francisco, we stumbled into this little, dimly lit Italian restaurant. There, we ordered a Pasta Pomodoro. The Pomodoro sauce tasted like fresh-picked, barely cooked chopped tomatoes with fresh basil and garlic.

Upon our return, we searched high and low for a recipe for the sauce, but we just couldn’t replicated it.

And, after that elaborate introduction, I have to say, we still haven’t! But in the spirit of that sauce, and as we attempt to achieve the fresh tomato taste, we did try something new. Our Pasta with Tomato and Grilled Italian Sausage tasted like freshly plucked tomatoes with smoky grilled spicy accents.

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Beef with Peppers and Pea Pods

One of the few things we made this week with our produce from our CSA box. This week was very bad in terms of using the produce we got. It turned into a hectic week in general, and we went out to eat/carried food in too much.

Next week will be a better week!

When this month’s Is My Blog Burning? #6 was announced, I was a little bit disappointed that it was “Griller’s Delight”. Don’t get me wrong, we love to grill in the summer, but we don’t get terribly inventive, for 2 reasons:

Reason #1: One of the members in this household stubbornly clings to a 15 year old very small Smokey Joe grill. It’s hard to get creative and inventive when you are working with direct heat on a very small surface. However, that doesn’t bother me for the most part because of reason #2:

Reason #2: We tend to mainly grill Hunks of Meat, and more specifically, Hunks of Cow.
Of course, this could be because of reason #1 (see above). Perhaps it’s just a vicious circle!

But as the week of the event approached, I also was presented with my CSA Challenge. So this became a dual endeavor - coming up with something worthy of the IMBB #6, and using as much of the produce from my CSA box as I could.

And so I settled on Tenderloin Chimichurri with Grilled Vegetables for the IMBB #6: Grillers Delight.

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Tilapia with Bulgar and Chickpeas

Fish is one of the sort of foods that lend itself to inventiveness. Using fish as a backdrop, there’s literally hundreds of combinations of creativity that can be applied.

Unfortunately, I live with the “fish challeneged”. It’s not that he doesn’t *like* fish… I think that would if he’d just try it more often. It’s just that given a choice between fish and, say, hunk of cow, hunk of cow is going to win every time.

Given that, there’s one fish recipe I seem able to pass off - very occasionally.

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Risotto with peas, pancetta and shrimp, ala caprese.

When I read that this IMBB edition was about rice (hosted by chez pim), I knew immediately what I had to do to participate.

Just a couple of weeks ago I had prepared my first risotto. I’d been aware of risotto - I knew it took some time and attention to make - but it’s rice, and I’m not really that big a rice fan, unless we’re talking wild rice (yeah, I know, wild rice isn’t rice. So I guess that takes me back to the “I’m not really that big a rice fan”, eh?).

So, long story short (I know - too late) risotto seemed like a lot of work for something I wasn’t that keen on in the first place.

None of this helps explain why one day a couple of weeks ago I just got it in my head that I MUST make risotto. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t logical. But there it was.

And I was a convert! I suddenly understood why risotto didn’t *really* count as rice. It’s in a class all by itself.

So without further ado, see the recipe below.

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Greek Chicken with Bean and Bulgar Ragout (and of course Red Truck red wine from Cline Cellars). See recipe by clicking the link below

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Tonight’s dinner was a penne pasta tossed with peas, pancetta, garlic, basil, onion and olive oil.

It was served with a very nice Taurino Salice Salentino Rosso, which at $9.99 is a bargain!

Take a look at the wine here.

We’ve become experts at finding really nice, drinkable wines for under $10 per bottle. Of course, when you have wine with dinner every night, that becomes a real priority!

Living in the northern climes, we tend to get excited about the little, simple pleasures in life.

Yes, that does indeed include the first real grilling of assorted meats. We’ve already grilled New York Strip steaks a couple of times, and they were great. But tonight it was a quick and really rather healthy flank steak.

Tonight’s dinner: Marinated Flank Steak, grilled, served over baby greens and assorted veggies, with a very good Marietta Cellars Old Vine Red.

A very nice salad bar at the local gocery store allows us to add things like chickpeas, scallions, peppers, olives, carrots, and other crunchy things in the most economical way.

(And there is no beating a Marietta Old Vine Red)

We made a commitment a few years ago to start eating healthier, as a whole. Oh, sure, we slip a lot, but in the long run, we really stick to good, healthy, cooked-from-scratch meals.

I’ve never quite figured out why people rely on boxed kits of prepared meals, frozen entrees, delivered pizza, or carry out night after night. In reality, it takes no longer to make a from-scratch, healthy full meal than it does to throw ground beef in a pan, brown it, and add the boxed kit to it… which produces… well, some call if a meal, but I don’t.

Tilapia with bulgar and chick peas is an example of an incredibly healthy, quick dish. It’s packed full of flavor and it’s one of the easiest things you could make. With the time and effort it takes to throw together a “meal kit”, you could be making a dish like this.

Recipe:

Bulgar and Chickpeas:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup bulgar (cracked wheat)
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1 and 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup chopped tomato
• 2 tablespoons pesto
• Salt and pepper
• 16 ounce can chick peas, drained
• 2 cups baby spinach
• Bunch of scallions, chopped

Tilapia:

• 2 Tilapia filets
• 1 tablespoon pesto
• Olive Oil
• Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the cracked wheat and saute until toasty brown, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add onions and saute lightly. Add garlic. Add the broth, cover and cook until the wheat is tender, about 20 minutes. If the wheat is tender but has not absorbed all of the stock, remove the cover and cook for another few minutes, stirring occasionally until the excess moisture has evaporated. Add the tomatoes and pesto; season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the chick peas and baby spinach, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes or until the chick peas are heated through and spinach is wilted. Adjust seasoning. Add scallions right before serving.

While bulgar is cooking, preheat oven to 425. Saute Tilapia in Olive Oil til lightly brown. Spread pesto on top, sprinkle with grated parmesan, and roast in oven, approximately 15 minutes.

Serve fish over bulgar.