Dinner Bowl #47

 

To utilize my pantry's goodies--and to have some fun--here we have some romaine lettuce (because it was there), steamed green beans that for some reason turned out less vibrant than expected, roasted purple potatoes (recipe from Yellow Bliss Road), and lentil-butternut squash patties (recipe from Simply Quinoa, sort of, more details below). All of that is drizzled with a creamy lemon dill sauce (recipe also from Simply Quinoa), because I figured it would all go well together.

The lentil-butternut squash patties were chosen because I had part of a butternut squash to use and because the recipe uses quinoa flakes. I made one sort of major error in my preparations, I think because the recipe is written in a slightly confusing way, and left out the nutritional yeast, spinach, and chili powder. They'd be better with those things, but I still enjoyed these as they were, because butternut squash is one of my favorite things, and the lemon dill sauce was delicious and covered up all my mistakes.

But also, the roasted purple potatoes were absolutely amazing. The seasonings were brilliant. I'm pretty sure just about any vegetable would taste amazing given that treatment, but the potatoes were utterly addictive. I am also glad I sprung for these little purple potatoes rather than just roasting my usual Yukon golds or red potatoes. My original plan was to buy a pack of multicolored potatoes, but alas, there were no purple potatoes in the mixed potatoes, and I had fixated on the need for purple potatoes. In any case, it doesn't matter, because these were so delicious as they were.

I like to buy the steam-in-bag green beans, but they were out (again) and this time I didn't want to buy the French beans or the wax beans, or the asparagus (all options that presented themselves to me), so I bought some loose green beans. Those are always a bit risky, because they're a bit more bruised and such, but they worked out okay. I wish they'd been greener, but one can't have everything.

The lettuce was something I had and threw in kind of as an afterthought, but I think they contributed a nice fresh crunch to this. The lemon dill sauce works well with lettuce, just as it worked well with everything else.

Does it make sense to buy dill in January? I don't know. I don't know anything. I also now have a giant quantity of fresh dill to figure out what to do with. But I am glad I'm making working through my pantry stocks more of an adventure than a chore, and so I will do something fun with the dill, don't worry. Just as soon as I figure out what that will be.

Feel free to share ideas!

Without the dill sauce, by the way, this would be top 8 allergen free. The sauce has cashews, though. But everything else is free of all major allergens.