What I Cooked Last Week.

I'll be sending these out sporadically, letting you inside my brain and kitchen, and hopefully inspiring you to think about food in a different light or providing some inspiration, maybe?

Though I love writing about nutrition, I wanted to add more meat to my Substack (no pun intended).

I’ll be sending these “What I Cooked this Week,” sporadically, exploring themes with food, the comfort it brings, and the connections it fosters. If this isn’t really your vibe, feel free to skip and wait for juicier nutrition content (pun intended).

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We hosted Shabbat dinner for the first time at our home with one of my husband’s coworkers and his girlfriend who’s Jewish. His coworker and I both laughed at our ignorance towards some prayers and anecdotes they both shared, and at my husband doing the short version of the prayers, a lack of knowledge his nephews make up for at every other Shabbat we do with the family.

Do we cater? Do we cook? I wasn’t sure how much time we would have and how open my schedule would be. We cook, I decided. We make it homie. We make it cozy.

Mediterranean theme night.

I looked at my cookbook collection for inspiration, nada. And so, I began looking for inspo online.

I made a delicious pearl couscous salad which roughly went like this:

-Pearl cous cous (cook as instructed by the packaging, I sautéed some garlic and onion before and simmered it in chicken broth, salt and pepper to taste)

-Cherry and sun-dried tomatoes

-A bunch of chopped cilantro and spinach

-Dressing: olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, sugar/salt/pepper (I eyeballed it all)

We paired the salad with Halfbaked Harvest’s Moroccan Grilled Chicken with Herby Lemon Olive Vinaigrette, the chicken was cooked in our air fryer grill and came out juicy, but to me, the herby vinaigrette was the star of the dish.

I also baked some russet potatoes sliced very thinly and tossed in olive oil, za’atar, and salt/pepper. I then roasted a head of cauliflower with lemon slices, added chopped olives, red wine vinegar, and toasted pepitas on top, and paired it with a yogurt/garlic/za’atar sauce on the side.

We had iced tea, some red wine, and feta cheese on the table for anyone who wanted to sprinkle some on anything (I added some to my fries). The couple brought over Zak the Baker’s Babka which was so good we’ve bought it twice more after that!

Safe to say, we had some leftovers for the rest of the weekend. The evening was wholesome, and compliments on the food were on par with the amount of business talk.

I wish I had pictures to show you, but in the business of it all I forgot, and the idea of this post came to me much later, so for now, enjoy Tieghan’s version down below.

Get cookin’ and keep chewin’!