WIAW: Weekend Eats

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Holiday weekends are pretty awesome, but when we get the time to make some fabulous food at home, they are even better! Once I reflected on all of the great food we ate this past weekend, I realized that What I Ate Wednesday would be the perfect time to share it all!

We kicked off our holiday weekend with some grilled vegetable quinoa. While I cooked up the quinoa and toasted pepitas, Nathan grilled some asparagus, grape tomatoes, red bell peppers, zucchini, red onions, and a jalapeño. We plated the quinoa and vegetables, sprinkled a small handful of the roasted pepitas on each plate, and then drizzled just a little balsamic vinegar over the top. It was absolutely delicious.

Grilled vegetable quinoa

On Friday morning, we went to one of our favorite breakfast spots in the area. Unfortunately, Mary’s Gourmet Diner is about 30 minutes from home. But, since we were heading in that direction to hike and Nathan’s sister was heading to the mountains, it worked perfectly to meet up there. Nathan had their breakfast club and I had a tempeh scramble. Yum!

By the time we got home from hiking, we were exhausted! Fortunately, we had planned ahead and had all of the fixings for throwing burgers on the grill. We love the bleu cheese burgers from Fresh Market, so those made our base.  We gathered everything we needed for the rest of the dinner prep and brought everything out to the table on our deck. Then, while the meat cooked we sliced tomatoes and avocados and munched on chips and salsa. We served the burgers with some broccoli and cranberry slaw. We could totally make this slaw, but we knew we didn’t want to deal with all of that on this particular evening, so grabbed some from the counter at The Fresh Market when we were buying our burgers.

Bleu cheese burgers

Grilled peach with vanilla ice cream

We even ended up with dessert on Friday night! Peach season is upon us, so we grabbed a couple that were perfectly right and a small container of vanilla ice cream. While we ate our burgers, Nathan placed the halved peaches over the grill (set on low). He turned them once or twice and cooked them until they were nice and soft. Then, he sprinkled a combination of brown sugar and cinnamon over them. Finally, we placed them in a bowl and topped them with a little ice cream. They were the perfect ending to the meal.
Saturday morning, I got up to run early (just enough to maintain my streak), and when I got home, Nathan was on his way out to the grocery store.  He ended up recreating a slightly more healthy version of the breakfast club he enjoyed the day before at Mary’s.  He used basil, garlic, and fat-free mayo to create the pesto mayo and we had turkey bacon instead of traditional bacon. The rest of the toppings were a combo of baby spinach and arugula, fresh tomato, avocado, and an egg with a slightly runny center. Nathan also made home fries with onion and fresh herbs.  While he was cooking, I decided it was a good morning to break out the French press, so we had a perfectly brewed cup of coffee while we ate. Ideal morning!

Breakfast club and herbed home fries

We had our last at-home meal of the weekend on Sunday afternoon before we left for the baseball game.  Fish tacos!  They were delicious, but the real standout was the roasted tomatillo salsa we had to go with them. We grabbed 4 nice looking tomatillos, some small onions, and a jalapeño at the farmer’s market on Saturday, so Nathan placed them all on a cookie sheet under the broiler for about 20 minutes (he turned everything about halfway through).  Once they were cool enough to handle, he tossed everything into the blender with the juice of a lime and a little salt.  He ended up adding more lime juice and a little more salt, but that part is totally a matter of preference. It was a real treat! In fact, we decided that when we head to the beach on vacation with my family, we will make some for everyone to enjoy!

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

What kind of special foods did you end up making over the holiday weekend?