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Shane got some Grey Sole yesterday, hoping it would be similar to his favorite fish, Black (or Dover) Sole. It wasn’t the same as Black Sole, but all agreed that it was a lovely fish when cooked with butter, dill, lemon, capers and green beans.

For the fish, I used this recipe (also below) from food52.com. Instead of snap peas, I used green beans from our recent  CSA box. The green beans worked well, they were heavier, heartier and less summery-feeling than snap peas would have been, but very tasty nonetheless.

Working through recent CSA boxes, has meant cucumber salad with every meal. Tonight was no exception. I usually just peel and chop the cukes and mix them up with some plain yogurt, salt, and sometimes olive oil, lemon or vinegar.

For our swiss chard, I used anchovies and garlic. If you’re an anchovy lover, this is a great thing to do with your chard leaves. You simply sauté up some anchovies and chopped garlic in olive oil and/or butter. When the garlic is soft, add chopped swiss chard leaves and cook until they’re soft and not bitter. Yum.

Rose was super excited about tonight’s meal, for some reason. Possibly because she did gymnastics for 5 hours, and only ate a scant quarter of a pb&j sandwich all day. She insisted on being photographed with her plate and then proceeded to eat every single thing on it. I guess starvation is a good way to get kids to eat.

• Butter-Seared Sole with Snap Peas, Dill & Capers •
from food52.com

4 tablespoons salted butter
4 (4-ounce) skinless Dover or Grey sole fillets
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
12 ounces snap peas, or green beans, trimmed
1/4 cup coarsely chopped dill
2 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed
3 to 4 tablespoons Meyer or regular lemon juice, to taste

Heat butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high until foamy and beginning to brown. Season fish with salt and pepper. Gently arrange fish fillets in skillet in a single layer, making sure that the pan isn’t crowded. (If necessary, cook the fish in two batches.) Cook fish, turning once with a thin spatula, until golden brown and crisp, 6 minutes. Remove fish to a platter or plates. (Reserve skillet and butter in pan.)

Return skillet to medium-high heat. Add snap peas to skillet and cook, tossing, until crisp-tender, 2 minutes (longer if using green beans). Remove from heat and stir in dill, capers and lemon juice. Serve fillets with snap peas.

As we ate dinner, all I could think was: this dinner is a win-win. Why? Because everyone was at the table, and everyone was more or less functional.

I pimped out yesterday’s chicken, rice and bean salad with more beans, more corn, more lime juice, more cumin and some sautéed scallions. We also had quesadillas (white and whole wheat) and silky-soft, roasted CSA bell peppers.

Everyone ate, no one puked. That’s a win-win-win-win, actually.

Yes, pasta with tomato and sausage sauce… again. It’s an easy, and pretty hands-off dish, and Rose and Shane like it. Get the recipe, and info on how to faux-vegetarianize it, here.

I am very excited about this new potato salad dish! It’s sort of potato salad, sort of potato side, because you roast the potatoes before assembling the dish and then serve warm or at room temperature.

With the potatoes, we had a green salad with an unthinkably terrible dressing, that I wont tell you more about. And steak. I am getting quite good at making steak, can you believe it? Tonight’s was a very loose interpretation of this recipe.

The potato recipe is from Saveur, and can be found here. It’s also below.

Of course I did a couple of things differently with the potatoes. Firstly, I used new potatoes instead of yukon gold. I didn’t use shallots, because we’ve been getting all kinds of curious and interesting onions in our CSA box lately. Because I prefer my onions soft, and perhaps slightly golden, but not brown, I didn’t quite brown the onions I used—which were like scallions with a baby onion at the bottom. For the garlic, I added a smashed bulb for flavor, and then removed it before mixing the onions into the sauce.

• Roasted Potato Salad with Sour Cream & Shallots •
from Saveur.com

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and cut into ¾-inch chunks
3 tbsp. olive oil, divided
1½ teaspoons kosher salt, divided
freshly ground pepper
2 medium shallots, thinly sliced (about ¼ cup)
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
⅓ cup sour cream
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. red wine vinegar
2 tbsp. chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley 

Preheat the oven to 400°. Toss together potatoes, 2 tbsp. oil, 1 tsp. salt, and pepper to taste in a large bowl. Spread on a rimmed baking sheet in a single layer and roast, stirring once halfway through, until browned and cooked through, 25-30 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool slightly.  

While potatoes are roasting, heat remaining 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan set over medium heat. Add shallots, season with remaining ½ teaspoon salt and let cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and brown, 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and stir until just softened, 1-2 minutes. Remove from heat.  

In a large bowl stir together the sour cream, mustard, and vinegar. Add the cooked potatoes, shallots, and garlic and gently toss to coat.  Add additional salt and pepper to taste and stir in parsley just before serving. Serve warm or room temperature.  

We’re not on the Cape as we’d planned to be this weekend. That’s a bummer. Dinner was far from a Cape meal, but it was fine.

I really mixed it up (insert sarcasm emoticon here) by making my favorite bean recipe with pintos instead of black beans. I think I prefer the black bean version, but it’s also entirely possible that I left out some essential ingredient, thanks to an overwhelmed brain.

Rose and I put together a decent guacamole, which we ate half of in the process of making. There was rice, of course, and weekday chicken for them, and salad for me.

Have I ever mentioned that I don’t like salsa from a jar (or can for that matter)? It has a certain icky flavor to it that I can’t tolerate, I’m not sure what it is. The one and only exception to this rule (that I know of) is Herdez Salsa Casera.

Herdez comes in a can or a jar, both versions are good, and it doesn’t have that weird jarred salsa flavor. I’m not saying it’s the same as when you make it from scratch yourself. But it’s a good thing to have in your pantry, and great in a pinch.

On the messed-up family front, Shane is feeling slightly better thanks to an acupuncturist we found, who makes house calls.

I was hoping to to go to the coffee shop for dinner, it being Wednesday and all. But Rose didn’t want to go, because, you know, she didn’t like her shoes.

The wonderful news is that I’m officially done with partial bed rest. I still have this discomfort that builds during the day, making it hard to be on my feet right when I  really need to be, around dinner time.

Fortunately, I had made Shane a ‘proper’ lunch of pasta with sweet Italian sausage and tomato sauce for lunch, and there was a lot of sauce left over. I made a fresh batch of pasta, warmed the sauce and threw together a simple salad.

For my version, I pulled the sausages out and replaced them with bufala mozzarella chunks. Rose and Shane devoured the sausage version.

Do you know that sausage-tomato sauce is the easiest thing in the world to make? It’s also a great make-ahead or make while you’re doing something else dish. Here’s what I like to do:

• Easy Sweet Italian Sausage and Tomato Sauce •

olive oil
1 yellow onion
3-5 sweet Italian sausages
1 large can San Marzano tomatoes
Italian seasoning
1-2 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper to taste
pasta
cheese for sprinkling 

Pour a decent amount of olive oil (about 3 tablespoons) into a large skillet, add a thickly sliced yellow onion and sauté until soft and translucent. Add sausages, chopped into 1” chunks, and cook for another 5-10 minutes. Add some Italian seasoning, maybe a teaspoon or two, (I like Penzey’s Pasta Sprinkle), a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional) and a can of whole, peeled San Marzano tomatoes. Mush the tomatoes a bit to break them up.

Add a tablespoon or two of butter while the sauce is cooking. When the sausages are cooked through, about 20-30 minutes, season with salt and pepper. Serve over penne or rigatoni with parmesan or pecorino for sprinkling. Pluck out sausages and give to someone else, if you’re a flexible vegetarian. Have a simple green salad on the side.

Back when Shane first had his surgery, a friend made us two meatloaves. I served the first and then we had that crazy heat wave and I couldn’t bear to turn on the stove. So I froze the second.

How thrilled was I when I saw it in the freezer yesterday morning? Thanks so much Julie.

We had it with zucchini sautéed in butter with lemon zest. And yes, I had some. The other night I found myself reaching for a sausage, and realized that the time may have come for me to add a teeny bit of poultry to my pregnancy diet.

Shane was not well enough to eat.

Last night we had dinner with our friends Ian & Britta, and their four (!) children, in celebration of their eldest’s 5th birthday. They made us a wonderful meal of veggies from the grill, sweet corn, pasta with yogurt, zucchini and tomatoes*, steak and hot dogs. They took care of Shane’s meat deprivation, and Rose’s too. Ian even cut Shane’s steak for him.

Did I show my gratitude to our very dear friends by carefully documenting and posting about the delicious meal they made for us? No. I was too busy enjoying their company and food to remember, but that’s no excuse. When I finally did think to take pictures, dinner was mostly over and I took a few crappy shots with my iphone that aren’t worth posting.

The reason I’m telling you all of this, is not only to assuage my bad food-blogger-guest guilt. It’s also to thank Ian and Britta for reminding me about summer. I’ve been so fixated on heat wave meals, and being hot and pregnant, that I forgot about all of the things I adore about summer, and summer dining. Corn! Zucchini! Grilled veggies! Meat for my family! And those languid, dreamy, long evenings.

Thanks guys, for the reminder. Tonight’s summatime meal was inspired by you.

*Britta, please post a link to the pasta recipe, if you have time.