It all came together OK

I was having trouble figuring out dinner.

I had some mung bean sprouts and some pea shoots and some radish shoots in the fridge that I wanted to use up. All local, all good, I just wasn’t sure our exchange student would like them. I had bought some cauliflower and some tofu and some cabbage, thinking possibilities like mac & cheese with roasted cauliflower tossed in and a sprouty salad on the side, or maybe a stir fry, with sprouts and cabbage and I want to make these egg ribbons that Francis Lam describes so nicely. I also have leftover cooked bacon and lots of cheese and a few nice little hydroponic cherry tomatoes, also from the market. For part of the ride home I flirted with the notion of grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon, or maybe this Rachael Ray BLT type stirfry, with shoots and bacon and little tomatoes.

But none of it was feeling quite right.

Then I remembered salads I’d made in summers – and springs – past, with roasted vegetables on a bed of lettuce or other greens, with maybe a little extra dressing, or maybe just lemon juice to go with the oil the vegetables were roasted in.

So, that’s what we had – the sprouts were tossed with a lemon vinaigrette – lemon juice, mustard, honey, olive oil – and the last of some grated Parmesan from a container lurking in the fridge. I roasted the cauliflower and a couple of carrots and half a shallot, sliced, in not too much oil. I topped the dressed sprouts with a big, chopped, hard boiled egg – somehow the box I got from Pecatonica week before last seems to have been jumbo rather than large eggs – and a handful of the cherry tomatoes sliced in half.

I made a few crostini that we topped with goat cheese and sun-dried tomato pesto, and it was a delightful dinner. The kid had seconds of the salad and finished it off before I could even worry much about how wilty it might get overnight.