Dinner Bowl #43

 

Here we have French beans, eggless ribbon noodles, mushroom walnut quinoa meatballs (recipe from Making Thyme for Health) in a cashew cream sauce, and carrots.

This is the sort of thing I had in mind when I set forth on my pantry utilization season this year: enjoying all these weird and random ingredients I have accumulated. These meatballs were a way for me to use some quinoa flakes, and they were amazing, especially with the sauce. I'm not sure how to describe them. They reminded me of my mushroom-walnut pate, Swedish meatballs, and stroganoff all at once. The cashew cream sauce is flavored with shallots, garlic, soy sauce, and Dijon mustard, which probably explains the Swedish meatballs/stroganoff vibes. The meatballs combine vegetables, mushrooms, walnuts, quinoa flakes, and various seasonings, which is possibly where the mushroom-walnut pate vibe comes in. I used some celery seed and salt rather than celery salt (since many celery salts are made from those things), too, rather than buying celery salt. I may not have used that much of the targeted ingredient, but that isn't the point. The point is that I focused on what I had alongside things I will use up without any trouble. I don't have to think too hard about using onions, celery, carrots, mushrooms, walnuts, soy sauce, etc. These are things I will always have and will use heavily.

I also liked that these were baked meatballs. I don't really like pan-frying things, especially things that are meant to be round.

French beans aren't my preference, but Wegmans was out of the green beans I've gotten hooked on, so I picked these up. They were good, though not as overwhelmingly delicious as green beans can be. I enjoyed them, though, so I'll count it a win. And carrots are, as my favorite vegetable of all time (I guess I have cheap tastes), an obvious little point of brightness.

I used to eat a lot more eggless ribbon noodles, and I do love them. They're just not as convenient to pick up as they once were, so I think I've been subconsciously rationing them. But in this case, I think more protein would make this meal more satisfying, so I might be more inclined to use some sort of protein-infused past option. I could see this going well with some other pasta shapes, even if that isn't so nostalgic. And probably it would also go well with rice--I'm rice-obsessed these days, as we've seen.

In terms of the protein, this wasn't bad--there is the quinoa, plus the walnuts and cashews, and the pasta does have some protein of its own--but I'd just prefer more. I finished the meal off with some herbal dessert tea with soy milk, though, so I did boost it a little.