Ahi Tuna Salad: Two Ways

I try not to eat too much tuna these days due to excessive mercury levels but once in a while…

Yes, more arugula salad. This time with ahi tuna prepared two ways: simply seared with salt and pepper, and then poke (salt, chiles, sesame oil and seaweed). I added heirloom cherry tomatoes and roasted mushrooms and tomatoes and topped it all off with miso dressing.

We had this while watching football…a stark contrast to the type of stuff we ate while watching football in Chicago (like buffalo chicken dip).

Vietnamese Grilled Pork Salad

We’re trying to eat healthy around here, which means a lot of fresh vegetables from the farmer’s market. This salad is an amalgam of leftovers from previous meals during the week: Vietnamese grilled pork, roasted mushrooms and Chinese chicken salad dressing. In addition to all that, we have colorful, small heirloom tomatoes and roasted baby squash on top of arugula. As you can tell, we’re eating a lot of arugula right now…I like the spicy bite and its a nice change from our usual spinach. I’ve also been making our own dressings: I like knowing exactly what is in my dressing, no gums or other things I can’t pronounce.

Roasted Mushroom and Farro Salad

We liked farro so much we couldn’t wait to try another recipe. I found this recipe on Food52 and just added roasted tomatoes and arugula (yes, we put arugula in everything right now) to the basic recipe. This is going into our regular rotation. The mushrooms are so meaty we didn’t even miss the meat.

To make things easier, I cooked the farro the night before. After work the next day, all I had to do was wash the vegetables, and roast the mushrooms and tomatoes. Since the farro was in the fridge, I didn’t have to wait for the mushrooms or farro to cool off before mixing everything together. The cold farro and the hot mushrooms combined temps to reach the room temp that the salad is intended to be eaten at.

Bun Thit Nuong (Vietnamese grilled pork over rice noodles)

Growing up, my mom often made this for us, especially on hot days. Summer generally doesn’t arrive in San Francisco until September, when I get home from work and don’t want to turn on the oven.

I often order these bowls when eating at Vietnamese restaurants and thought it would be a pain to put together at home. Turns out it really isn’t that hard, especially when you already have the marinated meat in the freezer (left over from an undocumented dinner party several months ago), the peanuts and noodles in the pantry, and pickled veggies in the fridge. You can easily put together the nuoc mam pha earlier in the week so that when you get home, all you have to do is boil the noodles, grill the meat and put everything together.

Lentil Soup w/Sausage

We’re on a soup kick. I make a big pot at the beginning of the week which gives us each a few servings for lunch throughout the rest of the busy week.

The first time I ever had lentil soup, a vegan friend in high school had brought  a can of Campbell’s Chunky soup for lunch. As a vegetarian at the time, this appealed to me. Nowadays, I don’t eat soup from a can but the memory of that soup made me search for a recipe. I used a basic recipe from Mark Bittman as my foundation and added some sausage we had in the fridge: