Sequestration Meal #569

 Here's an unconventional dinner in two courses.

I haven't often made whole artichokes, mostly because I have experienced them primarily as a delivery mechanism for butter, and as tasty as that is, I find a lot of other things more interesting. But I found this recipe for artichokes with a lemony tahini dip at Two Spoons that described the experience of eating an artichoke as a sort of vegan lobster, and I was intrigued. Plus I love tahini, and given that it has a lot more nutrition to offer me than butter would, including some protein, I figured having a tahini delivery mechanism wasn't a bad idea. I added salt and pepper to my artichoke but I'm not sure if that was necessary.

It was kind of fun to eat this on a Sunday evening (these posts are scheduled in advance, as you may recall)! And I did love having the tahini. I don't think I'm yet very good at cooking artichokes and I don't know that I ever will be, because they are pricey and not my absolute favorite thing. If I'm going to splurge on spring veggies, I'm unlikely to buy whole artichokes more than once a year, in favor of asparagus, which I love. But I was glad I made this.

A whole meal, however, an artichoke is not, tahini or no. So I also made dessert.

Here I have two pear halves, poached in a mixture of red and white wine (because I didn't have enough of the red wine to just use that), brown sugar, and spices. On top, I drizzled some melted dark chocolate. This was really good! It would have been a lot prettier with whipped cream but I didn't plan ahead as much as I probably should have when I was doing my shopping.

I don't know if this is reasonable to say at all given how weird this meal is, but it is free of all major allergens, so if you need ideas, maybe this will give you some--although you'll probably want to have another course! I wasn't particularly hungry on this night, though, so it worked out fine for me.