Alrighty then...tomorrow's dinner is planned and it's recipe time

So if you're coming--here's what we're having and where it's at:
Quinoa, lentil and veggie salad is chilling, choc cake is cooling, apple struedal is setting, and carrot soup is cooling, and the rest is ready for dinner tomorrow.  Pasta and cheese sauce, sausages (for Senor BBQ), coleslaw, lettuce salad, veggie tray (which they call crudites here!) and the pitas to have the cheese melted upon them.


It is a winter BBQ...so I have lots of hot and hearty dishes on the go for inside the house.  I did some to make sure there was food for me, new foods for others, and some standards to hopefully please the kids, and some for the "regular" menu...


Recipes/methods follow, so if you try them, let me know please:)


Quinoa salad: roughly equal portions of quinoa and lentils, with half portions each of barely (to hold their shapes and flavours) cooked and cooled corn, broccoli, and diced english cucumber, and an 8th of a portion of raw carrot sticks, sliced fairly thinly, but keeping enough thickness to provide some crunch.  The dressing/marinade I made for it was a mix of red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar (I like to mix them because I like the combo, and each alone is too 'loud'), with roughly equal portions of olive oil, and about 1 really generous tablespoon of gluten free soy sauce.  Mix together thoroughly, and gently (especially if the lentils are cooked all the way).  I also mixed in some quartered black olives, and I would have added green if they were here too.  If I could eat tomatoes, I would have added halved grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes.  I wouldn't add green peppers though, because their flavour is too strong, but I'd try red ones...


The carrot soup recipe is Irish Carrot soup, from the epicurious.com website.  It's google-able...


The streudal recipe sounded interesting, because it has a cream cheese component (and I had cream cheese!)...I didn't have any apple juice concentrate, so I reduced some cranberry juice to get the same effect.  I think this recipe was from allrecipes.com...but I'll get back if that's not the case.  Having never really rolled up such a dessert, I was dedicated to the instructions.  I needed to prep the sheets:  they needed to be buttered, and crumbed (which holds them apart to fluff and flake as it bakes).  Then, I put all the filling as described, leaving the two inch gap on the short edge, and folding the long sides in as described--and to my surprise when I started rolling it, the filling shoved along just right, with enough empty sheet left for a tidy roll-over.


Then, I baked a chocolate cake from a box, because I wanted to save my Canadian cocoa for the kids, because it's nut free...I'll add a jar of sour cherries and serve it like black forest with whipped cream and grated chocolate chips.  I realize now, I meant to buy bakers squares in Canada, so I could do chocolate curls.  Oh snap.  No curls.  Oh well!


Tomorrow I'll consider making buns, but if I'm tired in the morning (as I've been all week long) then Jeff can get some from the bakery when he goes to get the sausages.  I'll make the sauce for the pasta, and make the pasta, and do the rest.


The kids are on the computer, and it's feeling like a movie night right now, so I think I'm done.


Chao!