What's for dinner?

Our great experiment with weaning ourselves off of grocery store food continues. We've had to make a couple of trips to the store in the last couple of weeks, because really, I can't just feed my family sorrel, bread, and potatoes all week. But I am getting some great inspirations for cooking dinner using what we have on hand, and not going to the store specifically for one or two items.

Tonight's dinner was probably the best idea that I've stolen from a cookbook in a long time: a potato, red pepper, and Gruyere tart, with a side of leftover cucumber salad that has been jazzed up with a handful of fresh pea shoots.

The idea for the tart wasn't entirely my own. I'm a huge fan of author and cook Mollie Katzen, and in one of the many cookbooks by her that I own, there's a recipe for a potato, red pepper, and Gruyere tart. I changed the recipe a little bit, using the Russet potatoes that we got from the CSA instead of red new potatoes, and instead of a tart crust, I used a loaf of bread that Tom made over the weekend.

Tom has been experimenting with the many flours and grains that we have available to us through the CSA, and this one came out a bit...flat. Literally. Instead of poufing up into a nice, fluffy loaf, it came out flat and cracked. But no worries! I sliced off the top bit, hollowing it out a bit. I put the potato slices and red pepper slices in a deep skillet and boiled them for about twenty minutes in vegetable broth. Then I removed them with a slotted spoon, piled them on top of the bread, covered it with waaaaaay too much Gruyere, and baked it for ten minutes until that cheese got so gooey and melty, I thought I was going to swoon. Delicious!

I stretched out the leftover cucumber salad from last night with a big handful of the fresh pea shoots, also from the CSA. Cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow peppers, and just a tiny hint of oil and vinegar made this absolutely the most refreshing part of last night's dinner.

And of course, when I told Colden and Tom that dinner was ready, I was told by my four year old, "No, that's okay, Mommy, you go ahead - me and Daddy are too busy, gardenin'!" So, once again, I am eating dinner alone while the boys run around outside.

To be fair, it was an exceedingly beautiful day today. Here is Moose, our very own canine solar collector:

Had a wonderful chat with a good friend tonight who I miss very, very much, and had an extremely productive day at "work". If you can call it that. It was a good day.