Eating Sunday

When I was growing up, no matter what “innovative” new casserole from the pages of Good Housekeeping my mom might try during the week, no matter the Wednesday night hamburger helper, on Sunday, we ate a meal. A real meal; something really homemade, that took care and time.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve tried to hold on to that idea of the Sunday Dinner as somethng special. Problem is, I’m ten times as busy as an adult and twice as careless with my eating habits when cooking for myself. To combat this, I’ve decided to spend some quality time making pretty food and healthy food that I can photograph. The general idea is that if I take the time and care to make lovely food, it will be something special.

Here are my first attempts at this. Yes, I know it’s Tuesday. And yes, it doesn’t really seem like a meal as much as a couple of meals cobbled together. There’s an explanation for that…

Last Sunday’s dinner started with Artichoke and Tomato Salad. It is a simple salad with gorgonzola, balsamic vinegar, ashanti pepper, and white truffle oil. It was very pretty:

Truth be told, the ashanti pepper was a little overbearing and needed something added with warmer notes. But not bad for a total improv. Thrown into the mix were some yummy fresh Persian cucumbers.

Tastier was my lightly seared steak and wedged potatoes with curried sour cream. There is no picture of this, since the photos all came out rotten. There was nothing I could do to make them look sexy, or even appetizing.

I felt like I had cheated a bit. The goal is good food photographed well. So I made up for it a bit today with a pasta and veggies and chicken to cancel out that cardio boxing I did earlier.

I wanted to take a picture that made pasta sheets look as magical and homey as they smell. Not sure I did the job, but I’m close. Add to the pappardalle cut pasta some fresh cucumber, cured olives, tomatoes and gorgonzola…

and some sauteed curried chicken, and voila!- dinner.

Now, does anyone know how to toss pasta and the bits and have the bits not all gravitate to the bottom?