A Parsimonious Dinner for Two

It's been a few weeks since my last post, but all the recent Jewish holidays have played havoc with my time, diet and parsimony. It's been a non-stop eat-fest and I've been enjoying wonderful meals at Yaakov, Rivka, Lea, Randee and Jane's homes, and now it's time to start eating mindfully again. Fortunately, I have a collection of great 1500 calorie-a-day meal plans from Women's Health magazine that feature well-balanced and delicious meals so I won't suffer too much while losing the holiday weight. I recommend these to anyone who needs a painless method for dealing with holiday excess; ask me, and I will scan and email you the pages I saved from the magazine.

A few weeks ago, I got to make dinner for Mona (and her little dog Lucy). Mona is a member of this blog, and she was happy to see parsimonious gourmet cooking in action. We started with tomato soup made from less-than-salad-worthy tomatoes, garnished with plain Greek yogurt (see the post "Less than Perfect Produce" for instructions). Next, we enjoyed a salad of sliced fennel with sections of fresh grapefruit, served with a few pistachios and pomegranate molasses vinaigrette. Our main course was a dish of whole wheat linguine dressed with a sauce of pureed Italian tuna (this is one of those instances where you spend a little extra for superior quality - buy Italian and buy it packed in oil) and lots of fresh lemon juice with a lot of the rind grated in. Cheese is traditionally not used in Italy in dishes with fish, but if it makes you happy, I won't tell. Toss on a liberal amount of freshly chopped Italian parsley and dig in. A few spears of oven roasted broccoli (again - it wasn't the freshest, but it was certainly great when roasted and dressed with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of Parmesan. Dessert was a deep dish of sliced peaches and nectarine from - you already guessed - the reduced bin, and topped with oats, walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter before being baked to perfection and served with espresso from my new Aero Press coffee maker.