January 9 - 13

Phil is to thank for me keeping my cookbook-using resolution on week 2 of this attempt to cook more from cookbooks. Without his perusal, and finding of Sunday's dinner recipe, I'd be off the resolution train already! But he was looking through Scots Cooking, by Sue Lawrence -- I bought it during our second trip to Scotland -- and found this recipe:

Sunday

Roast Venison with Raspberry Sauce

(The real recipe is for black currant sauce -- but it gets that flavor mainly from 3 teaspoons of black currant jelly, and I didn't want to spend eight dollars on a jar of jelly that I might not use unless we made this recipe again -- and my mom gave us some lovely homemade raspberry jam, so we're using that instead.)

Melt 2 oz butter and 2 tsp jam in a pan. Add the venison roast (about 3 lbs) and brown in the butter/jam mixture. Season with salt and pepper, then put it in the oven at 425 degrees. Cook between 12 - 15 minutes per pound (so 36 - 45 minutes, if you have a 3 pound roast) -- closer to the 12 minute side for rare, closer to the 15 minute side for medium-rare. Take it out, cover with foil, and let rest for about 20 minutes.

Pour off most of the fat from the pan, then put it on the stovetop. Add 3 tablespoons red wine, 2 tablespoons sweet vinegar (the recipe suggests black currant or raspberry vinegar, but I think we'll use balsamic) and scrape up all the bits from the pan and bring to a boil. Add a teaspoon of jam and about 10 oz of hot beef stock and some thyme and simmer until it's a nice consistency.

We'll have boiled little redskin potatoes and peas with this. And bread.

Monday

Breakfast for dinner:

Banana and peanut butter pancakes

Scrambled eggs

Grapefruit

Tuesday

The halibut recipe from last Thursday -- we never had it. Both of us ended up having surprise meetings that night, so we pushed it back to this Tuesday.

Halibut with Lemon Herb sauce

Roasted cauliflower

Wednesday

Another copy from last week, but this one I actually tried:

Spinach baked potatoes

I absolutely loved, loved, loved this. I used a sweet potato instead of a baking potato, and added some mushrooms and tomatoes to the spinach viniagrette saute, and it was fa-a-a-a-a-abulous. So I'm doing it again.

Thursday

Pasta (probably whole grain fettucine) with artichokes, shrimp, spinach, and pesto: That's the basic recipe. Cook some pasta. In another pan, saute artichokes, shrimp, spinach. I'll probably add some onion, because I love onions. Some pesto at the end, when I add the pasta to the saute mixture. A little bit of the pasta water to help make a thick sauce, then simmer it all together in my big pan for a minute or so. Mmmmmmm.

Have a good week!