Wednesday Night Dinner on Sunday

Tomato Soup (another Jonny creation)

We are mixing it up this week because we have other plans on Wednesday Night (AA Bondy concert), so instead of skipping this week, Wednesday Night Dinner moved to Sunday Night. Jonny was in charge of this one as well (can we see a theme starting?). We love tomato soup, so he wanted to make it. The hope was to replicate the tomato soup from The Grove. We're not quite there yet, but we learned from this go round, and I'm sure we'll improve on it for next time.

Sunday 1/17

Meal - Tomato Soup

Shopping - Molly Stone

Prep and Eating - Jonny's apartment

Rating - B

The recipe was a mix of several different recipes (Dave + some online recipes). We used the Magic Bullet for mixing everything - a blender would have done a better job of blending the onion, tomatoes, celery and garlic. Next time we want to add tomato paste to give it more of a tomato-y flavor. Other than that, it was tasty. And so nice to have something warm to eat on a cold, rainy day in SF.

It was a valiant effort. And there's a slideshow to document the meal.

The First Two Dinners

I should caveat that I decided to start this blog after the first two meals of the year. I have no pictures to document these experiments. But I did want to include the details about the meals.

Wednesday Night Dinner 1/6
Meal - Barbeque Chicken Pizza + brussel sprouts
Shopping - Whole Foods (whole wheat pizza crust, chicken, bbq sauce, cilantro, onion, brussel sprouts)
Prep and Eating - Jonny's apartment
Rating - B

We've been craving pizza a lot, so we decided to make it for our first dinner together. Plus it's a pretty easy endeavor, especially since we didn't do a lot of prep time before that night. It was easy to run to the store and grab pizza dough and toppings. Dave gave Jonny a recipe to make our own pizza dough - we're going to try that later, promise!.

The pizza turned out so so. Not our best effort ever. Some notes - add less salt and find a better bbq sauce (Whole Food's shopper favorite let us down).

On the up side, the brussel sprouts were good. We tried Kelda's recipe for a sauce to put over them (soy sauce & butter reduction). That was the highlight of the meal.


Wednesday Night Dinner 1/13
Meal - Tuna Salad Sandwich +chips & salsa + salad
Shopping - Molly Stones
Prep and Eating - Jonny's apartment
Rating - A

Jonny makes incredible tuna salad (sans mayonnaise) so he gets full credit for this meal. I was crazy busy at work, so he took care of everything - shopping, cooking & cleaning. I witnessed all of this with my computer in front of me. It was so nice to be pampered in this way (even better if I didn't have to work). I even got a lunch out of it - he made me a sandwich and chips that I ate on Thursday. It was an amazing treat for another hectic day at work.

2010 Resolutions

This blog is dedicated to our 2010 Resolution: Cooking dinner on Wednesday Nights. We're 3 for 3. Whoop, whoop. We decided on this resolution for a few reasons:

1. Improve our cooking skills. We both want to learn to be better cooks. I'm a self proclaimed sucky cook. Jonny's proving to be pretty impressive, and he's definitely interested in learning more about the subject. We both want to cook more so we can get a little bit closer to perfecting the skill (if that's even possible).
2. Be more money conscious. There are so many amazing restaurants in SF, it's easy to eat out all the time. Cooking is less expensive than going out to eat, right? We haven't mastered this one yet. Every time we go to the grocery store, we walk out with at least a $50 receipt, but we're hoping over time, that we'll be more responsible shoppers.
3. Spend quality time together. It's turning out to be a busy year, and Wednesday nights are the only night during the week we aren't already obligated to do something else. We see this as a good time to catch up, relax and bond. Here's to testing the old adage: Food brings people together.
4. Less talking. More doing. We talk a lot about what we'd like to do. Now we're following through with something we talk about a lot. It's a fun way to challenge ourselves.

So, here we go..chronicling a year of cooking. 1 meal a week.