Lunch for Dinner

It's a new week and there is baseball tonight so we just had our big meal of the day for a late lunch.  My dog, Sadie, eats her one meal a day around 2 or 3 pm. She's spoiled that she can do that because I work from home.  When she was a puppy she ate two meals a day and then slowly stopped eating in the morning so I started to only feed her once at night. But then she would get hungry earlier so now she eats mid-afternoon and it looks like for the summer we'll be joining her. In fact we all just ate out on the deck since it is a beautiful day!

Today we tried to the young garlic and broccoli rabe - I simply sauted most of the stalk of the garlic and saved the bulb for later in some olive oil and then added the broccoli rabe.  A lot of recipes called for parboiling the green before sauteing but once again I decided to skip that step. I have had broccoli rabe before and disliked it greatly but when I tasted it today in the raw form is didn't have as pungent a flavour as I remember.  I may have cooked it a little too long because most of the greens had wilted too much and it was a lot of stalks.  I sprinkled a little freshly, grated Parmesan cheese on top that I'd seen in a recipe. Overall I enjoyed the greens and certainly felt good about the amount of greens I'd been able to incorporate into my diet this week.

The greens accompanied a grilled, teriyaki pork tenderloin that I did on the outside grill and it came out perfectly cooked.  I love those pork tenderloins because they cook up so quickly and are tender & juicy.  And for a starch today we had mashed, sweet potatoes that I added a small bit of brown sugar and some ancho chili pepper powder for a little spice.  They were very good but next time I'd add a little more pepper - they had the flavour but I'd like a bit more kick.

This was an easy, quick meal but if I were putting all my thought into it I've had added some crunch for a little more texture.  But yummy nonetheless!