Eating Sunday – The Pink Dinner

Pink and I have not always been on good terms. My parents were old school midwest and believed little girls should be in pink fluffy dresses (I resisted) and when they painted my bedroom pink (I protested), Pink and I parted ways. As I’ve gotten older, and maybe stared too long into the dark monochromatic wardrobe of the soul, I have made friends with pink again.

When a friend suggested a single color meal, I pitched around ideas for a couple of days. Orange? Too easy. Blue? Too hard. I landed on pink rather blithely. It seemed like a reasonable challenge…

Start with a nice summery rose…

I tried a radicchio slaw tossed with a balsamic reduction and (sadly invisible) pink Himilayan salt.

Not quite pink enough. Finding pink, or pinkable for that matter, vegetables was tough.

Figs! Figs are hitting the stores at the moment and the only thing better than fresh figs is photographing them.

A recurring theme today was that some of my food seemed a little creepy. It was all tasty, but just a bit off.

As an aside, while some of the pictures have gone through post-processing that enhances the overall image, nothing has been deliberately “pinked up”. Everything was pink to start. As an example, the above fig was processed through HDR software. The following is the true color of the figs:

Here are my figs after they’ve gone for a quick swim in balsamic reduction. Is there anything it doesn’t taste fantastic on?

One thing I decided on from the outset was pink potatoes. I wanted to color them without food coloring, so I used beets. The only problem is that I really don’t like beets. The stems are very pretty though…

I tried roasting them, which tasted not awful, but what really did the trick was the couple of pieces I threw in the pot along with the stems.

Let me just go on record as saying that pink potatoes are weird. This is something only a 5 year old girly girl could love. They tasted like, well, mashed potatoes (mashed potatoes = happy comfort food). It’s just that my brain sees some sort of unholy cherry chip fluff.

London broil (or alternately, pot roast) was the classic Sunday dinner at home. Mom would never have used coffee. Mom also thought that paprika was a crazy exotic spice.

How do you end a proper pink meal? Pink peppermint ice cream with homemade hot fudge.

I’ve always wanted to try making ice cream, but opted out today. Besides, Julie’s Organic does magical things with ice cream. My homemade hot fudge was a must though. Cold, it looks like tar and has the texture of chocolate taffy. You can turn it into hot chocolate, use it to fill candies, and naturally, drizzle it over ice cream. The only thing more versatile? Balsamic reduction.

Lastly, for anyone wondering, this plate gives a pretty good idea what the rest of my kitchen looks like…

This was fun, but other colors will have to wait. Black radishes come into the stores in September I believe…