Quinoa with Beets, Red Onion, Shitake Mushrooms and Snap Peas + Roasted Potatoes

This is one of my favorite ways to eat. Super vegetable-y and delicious. First, I cooked the beets in vinegar, water, salt and sugar in the oven until they became tender but NOT mushy!! Next, I sautéed a small red onion in olive oil before adding in roughly chopped snap peas and shitake mushrooms. In a separate pot, I cooked the quinoa until just done. When the beets were ready, I mixed everything together with a little lemon juice, olive oil, sherry vinegar, salt and pepper. Served with a side of roasted potatoes.

Trout with Romesco Sauce + Roasted Asparagus and Yellow Squash

Sorry about the lack of posts, I haven't really felt like taking photos of my meals lately, although I can assure you that I've been cooking a lot. Last night I made some of the best banana bread I've ever made before (very exciting considering that I totally mixed up the measurements for baking powder and baking soda). I've tried about a billion banana bread recipes but I always go back to this one. SO GOOD but having said that, I can recommend a few adjustments.

1) Reverse the quantities of baking powder and baking soda (I need to figure out why this worked)
2) Substitute 1/2 cup of the flour for whole wheat flour
3) Add in some cinnamon
4) Also add in about 1/2 cup of dried unsweetened coconut

Anyways, onto tonight's meal.

One night when Lucas and I were in Barcelona, every restaurant we wanted to go to was either closed or packed. After wandering around for about an hour, we finally decided to settle on some mediocre touristy spot that we had remembered reading about on a blog somewhere. The food was mostly ok, but one thing that really stood out was a side of roasted asparagus with romesco sauce. It might have even been one of the best things I ate on the entire trip! Anyways, I've been thinking about that asparagus a lot so I decided to try making my own romesco.

I read a bunch of recipes for research and went with the following ingredients -
(most called for hazelnuts but I skipped them because I didn't have any)

- 2 medium sized tomatoes, sliced in half and roasted in the over at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes
- 1 dried ancho chile, toasted in a pan for a few minutes on each side
- 1 piece of stale whole wheat bread, chopped into cubes and then toasted in olive oil
- about a tablespoon of almonds, toasted
- 2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped and briefly sautéed in olive oil
- a few pinches of dried chili flakes
- about 3 tablespoons of jarred pimientos
- a small handful of parsley
- a tablespoon of anchovy paste (apparently not traditional but it just seemed to make sense to me)
- a tiny bit of grated orange zest (maybe half of a teaspoon)
- a bunch of olive oil
- red wine vinegar
- salt
- pepper

I threw all of the ingredients into my food processor, blended until smooth and adjusted the seasoning with salt/vinegar.

Then, I roasted some yellow squash and asparagus at about 425 degrees until cooked but still a little crunchy and seared my fish briefly in olive oil. Turned out really well!

Looking forward to Thanksgiving! I'll be taking lots of photos!!

Gazpacho

The gas in my building still hasn't been turned on after a week which means no hot showers and no gas stove so I've had to work a little harder to come up with meals. Let me tell you, I've become very resourceful with my toaster oven. The other day I even made a plum crumble in it! 

Today we had gazpacho for lunch. It was super simple to prepare. First, I tore up some day old bread and let it soak with a few squashed up tomatoes, salt, olive oil and sherry vinegar while I prepped the other ingredients. Next, I roughly chopped a little red onion, some cucumber and both red and green peppers. Next, I blended everything together, adjusting the seasoning with more salt, pepper, lemon juice, and tabasco for a little bit of heat. I let the soup chill for a little while and when I was ready to eat, I toasted up some roughly chopped almonds and olive oil croutons. This was the best summer lunch!