fun with addition

Last night my housemates and I had each invited someone over to cook dinner which meant that by about 7:00 our kitchen was full of 6 people preparing 3 separate meals. Sarah was making pasta. I was roasting veggies. Olivia was putting things together for a cold barley salad. Aliza was preparing to cook some tempeh. Avi and Emily hadn't even started and we had a storm of people chopping, sauteing and mixing. The counters and tables were littered with spices and Brussels sprout ends and dirty bowls and utensils. Things were kind of crazy, when someone had a brilliant idea - - we could combine all of our efforts into one meal for 6. All of the food got combined into 2 delicious dishes that didn't go together that well but were excellent on their own.
Dish # 1 - a barley/rice and veggie salad
What went in:
- Olivia made a base of tomatoes and artichoke hearts
- Olivia had also made some barley. We thought it was going to take too long to cook though so I also started some brown rice which was mixed in as well.
- I roasted some brussels sprouts and green beans
-I also picked some cilantro from our garden and mixed it in
- Avi made a delicious vinaigrette using grapeseed oil infused with orange, rice vinegar, a bit of mustard and some other mysterious ingredients. It was a delicious dressing and its too bad that we don't know exactly what went in it.
- This was all tossed together....yum!


Dish # 2 - Penne with tempeh and cranberries in a brie sauce
- Sarah made some penne
- Emily brought some red onion and chopped it up
- Aliza made Tempeh using the onion, some sherry, dried cranberries and some mysterious add-ins by Avi (Avi, you should comment on the post or edit if you can fill in any of these ingredients. I would love to duplicate this dish)
- Avi made a brie sauce. At the last minute we threw in some cranberries and curry powder.
- Once again this was all mixed together for another amazing dish!

We took our food outside and sat down as a merry group of six. What an excellent last minute dinner party!
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Sometimes everything you want to use up just happens to taste good togther

So Aliza came over last Thursday for dinner right after we received our share from the fruit and veggie co-op. Sarah had also asked me earlier to try to start getting rid of our cheeses, because we had probably 12 different types of cheese in our fridge, and she was afraid some would go bad if we didn't start working on them. Earlier I had also decided that we needed to use nori sheets somehow in our dinner.

The thing that I had been most excited about from fruit and veggie was a leek. I don't know why, but I really wanted to find something interesting to do with it. We also got a big bag of apples, which I thought would go well with the cheese. The only protein we had in the house was a big chunk of tempeh; We decided to combine all of the ingredients into one dish.


We sauteed the leek until soft, and then mixed it in a bowl with ground up tempeh, a mix of 4 different kinds of goat and cow's milk cheeses, and chopped apples with a bit of salt, pepper, and smoked paprika.

This was all put together in a pan with some milk and 2 eggs, in order to make some kind of crustless tart. We shredded and fried the nori and stuck it on top.

It was pretty good, though some of the goats milk cheeses were a bit too smelly for my taste