Almost Vegan Black Bean Soup

Another great supper made by SO, who had a craving for black beans lately. Delicious, not too thin, warming on a cool night. The almost vegan part is because of the late addition of crushed Doritos for some crunch and a blob of sour cream. You'd have to pick vegetable broth over chicken broth obviously. That is about as close to a vegan dish as you'll find on this blog, except for salads I suppose. And salsas. And granola bars. Never mind.

(almost vegan) Black Bean Soup

I would normally not crunch up Doritos in a soup, but we had dozens of those little tiny 16g bags left over from Halloween. Hate to waste. Other then that, I think the fresh cilantro and a bit of hot sauce made the dish.

Next Time: a different ingredient for the crunch

Me: 9/10
SO: 10/10
SSO: n/a

Grilled Shark with bok choy and skillet potatoes

There isn't really a recipe for this, I just wanted to remember the meal since it was so tasty. And unusual, I suppose. On Saturday, SO went out downtown with a friend and ended up browsing Whole Foods. It's a pretty cool place to look around, if not actually buy anything since it is so expensive. But you can get some products that are hard to find, and arguably the price is worth it to get whole grain, organic, no pesticides, free-range blah blah blah products.  That's how we ended up with two gigantic shark steaks.

Grilled shark with bok choy and skillet potatoes

We've been killing it lately with the cast iron skillet, it's just great for so many things. But potatoes it especially excels at. Golden brown, just plain yummy.  The shark and bok choy we both did on the bbq. The fish was oiled up just a tiny bit and lots of freshly ground salt and pepper. The bok choy was tossed with a bit of oil and I sprinkled a random Epicure spice on it. One of those spice blends with a strange name - maybe it was "Canadian" or something like that. Then it was into a cooking basket. The shark was done slightly more than medium, and the veggies were grilled al dente with a bit of char.  The steaks were so huge, we both only ate half of our portion, so the rest we ended up putting in a fish soup the next day.  That was also just great!

Next time: maybe try a different veggie, and go with smaller portions of fish

Me: 9/10
SO: 10/10
SSO: n/a

Sausage, Fennel, and Chili Pasta

I love an interesting pasta dish. I'm not an overly big fan of tomato sauce, or maybe I'm just tired of it. I like it when it is not overly "saucy", which is opposite to how SO likes it. Anyway. This dish started when some friends came over and brought some fresh hot chilies from their garden. Yea!  The perfect way to spice up a dish.

Sausage, Fennel, and Chili Pasta

There are quite a few recipes out there that mix sausage and fennel, I wanted to try that. Plus any excuse to use a kitchen gadget....in this case, the mortar and pestle. So will just add the chilies, and for good measure some fresh herbs like parsley and green onions. And pickle, it needs pickle.

Some of the fresh ingredients

Grinding up the chilies and fennel worked out much better than I anticipated. Apart from watering eyes, it worked really well with the browned sausage.I didn't taste the pickle much honestly, not sure if there just wasn't enough or if it was a dumb idea. Will try more next time.

Next Time: either more pickle, or eliminate it.

Me: 9/10
SO: 6/10 (a bit too spicy)
SSO: n/a