Big lunch Tuesday

Late workouts = big lunch!

Many, many years ago I used to eat at Rainforest Cafe.  When I lived in Orlando and worked for Disney my friends and I seemed to end up there a lot.  They had a chicken dish there called Typhoon Chicken that was pasta with grilled chicken and a corn/black bean/tomato relish on top of it.  That may have been my first experience with black beans ever.  I loved it.  Of course, as if often the case with my favorite item at a restaurant, it did not make a menu revision a couple of years later.

Today, while thinking about what to make for my big lunch, that combination came back to me.  It came back to me for the following reasons:

  1. I made black bean burgers and pico de gallo last night for dinner and have some leftover and I like to repurpose food.
  2. Meg left me a bag of salmon fillets in the freezer.
  3. I had exactly one portion of whole wheat linguini left in my pantry.

Done.  I took the salmon fillet, sprinkled it with salt and pepper and then spooned pico de gallo on it.  I put this in a foil package and popped it in a 375 oven for 20 minutes.

Before cooking - salmon with pico de gallo salsa in foil pack

Meanwhile I boiled my linguini.  When fish and pasta had just a couple minutes left I popped a black bean burger patty in the microwave to heat up.  These had black beans, corn, garlic, chipotle pepper, oats and bread crumbs in them.  After everything was finished I assembled.

Pasta with crumbled black bean burger

Salsa'd up fish on top

So good!  I maintain that I’m not a great cook, but I am an excellent copy cat.  So, thanks to Rainforest Cafe for inspring today’s lunch.  My run and Zumba workout thank you.

(Okay, and as I was typing I just got a phone call offering me an ACTUAL final interview for this position that has been courting me since September.  I’ve had 4 other interviews.  I thought the last one was the final one.  I was mistaken.)

(Also, I’m watching Enchanted as I put up my Christmas decorations.  It’s such a cute movie.)

 

 

Sarah hosts a baby shower

Sitting down feels nice.

I have been on my feet since 7am when I got out of bed to complete baby shower prep and then host said baby shower.  The good news is that it was a lovely shower, several groups of the mom to be’s friends were here and everyone seemed to get along, have a nice time, enjoy the food, ooh and aah at baby gifts and celebrate our friend, of course.

Angela, the mom to be, would not be into all the pastel, so we stuck to a hot pink and orange theme.  Enjoy some party pics! (If you click on them, they get bigger and much easier to see.)  I was really proud of our pink and orange food, which included: port wine cheese & crackers, carrots, red peppers and hummus with red pepper relish, a salad with grated carrots and pomegranate seeds, bagel platter with salmon and red onion, a crostini with a sweet potato spread topped with a peppered pork tenderloin and a pumpkin penne pasta.  Desserts were pumpkin cupcakes and a cake from a local bakery that Angela loves.  I also attempted cake pops for the first time.  They went okay.  I don’t think I’m in a big rush to make them again, but I am glad to be inducted into the cake pop club made so popular by Bakerella.