What We Ate: June 2-6 (Power outage dinners)

This was an unusual week for us. D. went out of town on Wed. and that evening we had massive storms and the power went out, leaving us to hightail it to a restaurant with electricity. When the power came back 19 hours later, we had to throw food out and started to eat whatever was semi-thawed in the freezer. So, we didn't make a lot of fresh food this week.

Monday
leftover chicken pot pie from Sunday night (which D. had made), salad

Tuesday
bay scallops with potatoes (adapted from "Scallops Oreganata" in Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen), no time to make a vegetable, orange juice

Why this didn't work:
This is not a dish to make when it is nearly 6:30, everyone is hungry and you've got scallops that can be easily sauteed in 5 min. Even with microwaving the potatoes in water to speed up their boiling, it took nearly an hour (labor-intensive hour) from start to table and no one was wild about it. Far happier were they with scallops sauteed with cream, sherry and mushrooms, which I made a few weeks ago, but alas, I had no cream or mushrooms on hand and thought this would be a good way to use up some potatoes. I also didn't have all the ingredients Lidia had listed, such as onions and tomatoes and the chives I substituted for onions just didn't do the trick.

Moral of the story: When you've splurged on scallops, part of the cost is convenience, so it's silly to waste them on labor-intensive cooking.

Wednesday
dinner at Panera, during the storm

Thursday
a half-thawed frozen pizza with melted-ice cream shakes

Friday
omelets with goat cheese, chives and ham (TA and D gone), garlic toast (from thawed out bread), fresh carrots and peas or salad
(PE actually ate this without adaptation)