Dinner#1

For dinner last night I had to use up four potatoes. In my fridge loomed a scary site -- but I managed to find a large hunk of monterey jack cheese, which looked promising. In the door I found a jar of Trader Joe's pesto I forgot I bought (almost as good as finding a $5 in your jeans). Conveniently, there was also the necessary dairy products that are almost required to make baked potatoes really tasty (butter, milk, sour cream? Hells yea.)

My go-to book for awesome recipes is the wonderfully helpful "New Best Recipes" by Cooks Illustrated. In it's pages I discovered Twice Baked Potatoes. I normally don't like baking potatoes in the oven, mainly because I think about dinner right about the time that I'm hungry for dinner....not the best timing, but when have I had great timing? Plus, heating up the entire oven for over an hour just for potatoes seems a little energy wasteful.

There recipes for Twice Baked potatoes has some variations that I'll try another night -- Indian spiced? with pine nuts? (I've even made a variation with crab - so tasty.) But this version was substituting regular cheddar with monty jack and adding pesto! Zing! Dinner is on.

They turned out well, even though the process did take about 1.5 hours total (baking potatoes 1 hr, scooping out inards and mixing with yummies, 20 min, the twice baked part -- another 15 min). I'll definitely make them again - and maybe for company.

Twice baked potatoes might make a fine meal for some vegetarians I know, but I like some green with my meal. I've had a mini-obsession with Brussel Sprouts ever since Figueroa Produce has started selling them for so cheap and fresh. Brad cooks them much better than me, but he had just given his first lecture at USC, so I thought I'd give him the night off. The problem with that is my penchant for not reading recipes all the way through. . . which lead me to conveniently skip the part that told me to 'trim the bottom of the sprouts'. Whoops. This apparently helps them cook more evenly and absorb more flavor. NOTED. These turned out tough and not as flavor as when Brad cooks.

All in all a good, tasty, veggie laden meal that filled us up. 3.5/5.