So I feel like the lady with that cheesy cooking show on the Food Network. You know the one that buys an apple pie and a cheese cake from the grocery store and teaches you how to turn it into a splendid homemade apple cheese cake parfait? But sometimes you just don't have time to make the actual homemade coconut cake that you intend to make for your mother-in-law's birthday. It's just been one of those weeks. You may have noticed that I've been quiet. Trust me it's better than the reverse. I had an old back injury flare up and when I'm in pain, you just don't want to hear what I have to say. It's uninteresting and impolite. You should have seen us in the delivery room nine months ago. If my mom could have plugged that little baby's ears in utero she would have.
But anyway, I digress. We celebrated Cecile's birthday a bit belatedly this evening with a scoop of Double Rainbow Soycream Mango Vanilla topped with fresh raspberries. I found myself as dinner drew to a close racking my brain for what I could come up with for dessert. Thank goodness for that beautiful basket of raspberries that I picked up at the farmers market on Tuesday, and then there was relief when I lifted up the carton of ice cream and surprise! It didn't feel too light. There was a much more respectable amount left then the homemade vanilla that I checked first. Oh but the milk shake that I made yesterday with the homemade vanilla, frozen blueberries, soymilk, and a spoonful of blueberry jam, was worth it. (A spoonful of jam- that's the secret to a rich fruity shake if you ask me.) And it's a good thing, because this practically pre-fab dessert was perfect. Light and fresh and colorful. Just festive enough for a mid-week post birthday celebration. And I'm thinking right now that Double Rainbow might make the best commercial soy ice cream.
Dinner was pretty much a reprise of the polenta stack that my mom made last week, but I changed it up a bit. Here's how it went:
It started with a salad of arugula, avocado, and roasted corn tossed with a basil vinaigrette [About a cup of basil, a clove of garlic, a pinch of salt, and enough lemon juice and olive oil to make it blend in my subpar (See? Just a few days ago I wouldn't have said subpar. My word choice would have been much less ladylike.) blender and become a smooth tangy dressing]
And then the stack:
Grilled polenta (quarter inch slices off that tube from Trader Joe's)
Grilled onion
Grilled eggplant
More polenta
Grilled beet (Here's where I strayed from the original, and I liked it. I kind of wish that I had ditched the eggplant all together. I'm liking the corn, avocado, beet, arugula combo. I wasn't so sure how grilling beets was going to work out. Would it just be an undercooked red mess? It did take a little while, but after maybe 10 minutes a side, it was tender enough to play nice with the soft polenta.)
More eggplant
More polenta (Yes, the polenta ratio was way too high.)
Topped with a beautiful red-tinged yellow tomato whose beauty was not enhanced by the golden polenta beneath it.
That's it. Oh if only you could see the beet...as it was unstacked and eaten and the magenta of the beet juice trickled across the golden polenta...then it was pretty...so please, be brave, and pile on the beet.
