A Symphony of Flavor

Last night's supper was like a taste explosion in my mouth! After a spate of meh suppers, this was an exciting change! Let me explain...

I saw this post over at What the hell does a pinkhaired girl eat, and then I googled it and found this post at Smitten Kitchen and was even more intrigued, and after realizing that I did indeed have romaine lettuce, I decided to go for it!

Originally I was going to make pizza, and try out a new pizza dough, but then I ran out of time. I was peeling my beets (naughty!) for Susan's Beet Chocolate Cake and decided to chop up the bigger ones and roast them, and then I threw in a few carrots and the last two fennel bulbs and some onion and a whole head of garlic to roast. Sprinkled them with oil and a leeetle bit of balsamic and threw those in the oven for 30m at 350 degrees. So it was to be pizza with pesto sauce and roasted veg, which sounds great, doesn't it? But pasta with pesto and roasted veg was great!

And we tried that new Barilla omega three juju magic pasta and it didn't taste too weird, so that's good! Weight watcher me was pleased to note that it's only 2 points a cup instead of 4.
And those beets! Wow!! So sweet and good! The puree for the cake was so tasty! I don't think I've ever had a beet that tasted so good.

And when I was making the pesto, I only had to use 1/2 t salt and 1 T of olive oil. So it's kind of light, but really tasty, and the sweetness of the roasted veg and the garlicky spicyness of the pesto really married well.

Romaine Pesto

1 1/2 C romaine lettuce, packed
1/4 C walnuts (5)
1 clove garlic
1/2 t salt
1 T olive oil (4)
2 T nutritional yeast

Blend everything except oil in food processor, scrape sides and drizzle in oil while running processor.
Yum!
And this cake! It is a light cake that you can eat everyday! But it's not the 'light' that leaves you like, 'Ah, I just ate a light cake.' Very moist and satisfying. I have to admit, I did not use any fancy-dancy cocoa, just Nestle's, but that worked well. The only change I made was to use 1 T of oil in it and not the 2 T of water she calls for to add to the beet puree. I think I used more than the 1/4 C water in the blender to get the beets to puree, anyway. I used 4-5 (can't remember) small beets and that gave me roughly 1 C of puree. Oh, and I didn't use whole wheat flour 'cause I was out. Heck, I should just give you the recipe...

4-5 small beets
1/4 C water
1 C sweetened applesauce
1 T oil (4)
1 t vanilla
1 t apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 C all purpose flour (12)
1/2 C cocoa (2)
1 C sugar (16)
1 T cornstarch
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/4 t cinnamon

36 points total divided by 18 = 2 points per slice

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Oil a 9 x 13" pan.
Peel, chop and boil your beets until tender.
Puree beets with 1/4 C water, pour into 2 C measure and fill to 2 C mark with applesauce. Whisk together the rest of the wet ingredients.
Whisk together the dry ingredients in another bowl and then pour the puree mixture in and mix until just combined.
Bake at 325 for 40m or until it tests done.

Sorry about the rant yesterday about the book. I'm still reading it, because, truth be told, all I have left from the library is a non-fiction book that I should be reading, but don' wanna. Probably someday you'll even see me read the next one (I'm betting there is one) if our library has it. Or maybe I'm wrong! Looks like this is the last one! Now I have to eat crow.

Fiddled a little with the baby blanket pattern, got to the point where I figured out something else to try and set it down, will try and pick it up today. Maybe not stripes every other row, but then that means a wealth of ends to weave in...