A Delightful Dinner

Today was a kitchen day. I spent most of my time in preparation for dinner guests but was smart this time and decided to double most of the recipes we were putting together for meals down the road.

I started by whipping up a tomato basil soup. I love making soup and, as usual, I didn't follow any specific recipe and instead threw in items that we had sitting around the kitchen. I made excellent use of some of the "priced to clear" organic tomatoes we had purchased from Community Natural Foods last night. I made so much soup that I had enough for this evening as well as soup for three other meals. It feels so good to make food for the freezer and is definitely an ideal solution for a busy mom like me.

I also made the Summertime Succotash from Alicia Silverstone's book, The Kind Diet. A Succotash, for the unacquainted, is a dish that is made from corn and lima beans and was made frequently during the great depression. Alicia's recipe is great - it's so fresh and satisfying in flavour - I would definitely recommend it!

I made one of my favourite fresh salsas - Sweet Corn Salsa, from Rebar. I doubled this recipe to have some for tomorrow when we are having more dinner guests.  It's such a beautiful salsa to look at and it's really easy to make. I made a guacamole as well and served both with unsalted Que Pasa Tortilla Chips. Can you believe that one serving (approximately 30 chips) has only 2 mg of sodium? I'm amazed by this because I always find chips very high in salt. I will definitely be purchasing these chips in the future.

The visual highlight of the dinner for me was the salad - I was so excited to incorporate the edible flowers we had purchased the night before. The salad included kale, spinach, oranges, raw pumpkin seeds, toasted pine nuts and the maple-chipotle vinaigrette from Rebar's Painted Desert Salad. I made a duplicate of this salad for tomorrow's dinner as well.

My husband put together a lovely Lemon-Lime Sorbet using our ice cream maker. It was a low-effort dessert to make and included fresh lemon and lime juice and zest and a simple syrup he made using sugar cane.

All in all it was a successful dinner and I walked away from the table feeling very satisfied and not bloated - it felt so great not to be weighed down by an overfilled belly. The only thing I felt dinner was missing was some hot and fresh crusty bread with vegan margarine . . . perhaps we can add that to the menu for dinner tomorrow night.