This is Rob and Lisa Moncur. Jeremy and I met Rob when Jeremy and I met- we all lived at King Henry. Then, through more King Henry ward connections, Rob met Lisa, they started dating, they got married just before Jeremy and I got engaged, and Lisa and I recently learned that we were rooting for the other couple to get married and never even put the other's maiden name into our phone. Lisa has been Lisa Moncur in my phone since I met her, and I've been Alyssa Lindström in hers.
All of that was to say, we really like them :)
We're learning about the whole married friend thing, and we love it, but we aren't very good (yet) at coordinating get-togethers. So the week before Thanksgiving, I said, "Jeremy, let's have them over for dinner next week!"
"...next week is Thanksgiving..."
"Oh. I meant the next week."
Look at us accidentally planning dinner two weeks in advance.
While we want to get great at doing dinners with our friends, this particular dinner was blog-worthy because it was... well, an adventure. For lack of a better word.
One con of planning so far in advance is that other things
happen, and you forget about what’s happening in two weeks. Or sometimes even
the next day. After reading a text, Jeremy told me on Saturday, less than a
week before our planned dinner, “Oh, I forgot I told Patrice I’d help with a
show on Wednesday.” “Okay, cool.” No reaction about Wednesday’s dinner. I
forgot, and so did he. Until the next day.
In sacrament meeting. As it turns out, the best place for good ideas.
We just decided we’d need to cancel because the commitment
to the show was made before the invitation to dinner was extended. But I forgot
to call and cancel. Until Tuesday afternoon when Jeremy learned he wasn’t
needed for the show. Lucky for us.
We also forgot that we needed to make time for tithing
settlement. 7PM Wednesday night. Dinner with Rob and Lisa, 7:30PM. Not a big
deal, right? Oh wait, I have class til 6:30. Oops.
But it was okay. I had Rachel Ray’s “30-minute Meals For Get Togethers” to save me. Used book store on our honeymoon. What a great find. Jeremy picked me up a little bit early from class (we
got out early, just not as early as I needed) and we grabbed the few things we
needed at the grocery store and I put him to work chopping onions while I
threw the meat in the oven.
PORK TENDERLOINS
- Package of tenderloins large enough for your party
- Balsamic vinegar for drizzling (about 3 tablespoons)
- Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
- Half the number of your tenderloins. Use that many garlic cloves, and crack them.
- Steak seasoning blend (whatever your preference is)
- Rosemary
- Thyme
Preheat oven to 500•F. Trim fat off of tenderloins and place
on a cookie sheet with a rim. Coat in a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar,
rubbing the vinegar into the meat. Drizzle the tenderloins with olive oil, just
enough to coat. Cut small slits into the meat and disperse chunks of crack garlic
cloves into the tenderloins. Combine the seasoning blend with the rosemary and
thyme, and rub the meat with the mixture. Roast in the hot oven 20-25 minutes.
Let meat cool, slice and serve.
My mistake: We didn’t have enough time for the tenderloins
to finish cooking. They’d only been coking about ten minutes when we had to
leave, and I decided that turning the oven off right then would mean they would
have enough time in a still hot oven to finish cooking and then the oven would
be cool.
Nope. We didn’t serve any pork with our meal.
When we got home from tithing settlement, I was just so sad
that I’d really not thought that one through and ruined what had potential to
be fantastic meat. It smelled so good while it was roasting! Jeremy, in an
attempt to comfort me, said, “At least it’s not like you’re feeding my parents
and they hate you and this is your only chance to impress them.”
“Just let me be disappointed for a minute, okay?”
“That is letting you be disappointed! I’m just telling you
it really is okay and not the end of the world. We’re also not running to
McDonald’s to feed Rob and Lisa. You’ve got plenty of food.”
“Would you just go set the table?!”
It’s hard, even pretending to be annoyed with him.
We did have plenty of food. The meal that Rachel Ray planned
was pretty simple, so I’d done three parts (there were four, but we just didn’t
need the cheese wheel too.) Tortellini with a delicious garlic sauce and
ratatouille. Yes, we ate ratatouille. I was pretty dang excited about actually
making and eating that dish. Disney made
it pretty big, it’s gotta be good, right? And turns out, it’s not all that
complicated.
RATATOUILLE (this recipe makes a lot. Feel free to cut it in
half, and it still is in pretty generous proportions)
- 1 large red bell pepper, cut lengthwise into 1-inch strips
- 1 medium sliced onion, sliced
- 1 medium eggplant, sliced into ½-inch pieces, piled and quartered
- 4 plum sliced tomatoes, quartered lengthwise
- 6 cloves garlic, crushed
- Olive oil, to coat
- Rosemary (3 tablespoons)
- Pepper and salt to taste
Preheat oven to 500•F. Combine the vegetables and garlic on
a cookie sheet (this is what the recipe suggests, I used a 9X13 baking dish.
Roasting time is cut down when they’re more spread out, but not by too much).
Drizzle liberally with olive oil and season with rosemary, pepper, and salt.
Toss to coat vegetables evenly. Roast until just tender, about 15 minutes.
TORTELLINI
- 1 package of cheese-filled or mushroom-filled tortellini (you can definitely buy it not filled and do it yourself, but a fairly large package was $2 at Smiths, so I did it this way. Cheap, and takes a lot less time)
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2/3 cup grated Parmigiano cheese
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ cup olive oil
Put a pot of water on to boil. Cook the tortellini as
directed. Heat 1 cup of chicken broth to boil and remove from heat. Mix broth,
garlic, cheese, nutmeg, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Toss hot, cooked
tortellini in with the sauce. Yum.
Besides the tenderloin tragedy, dinner went really well, and
it was so fun to see Rob and Lisa, and, of course, tell them our anecdotal
dinner adventures. Lisa made a delicious zucchini cake and was missing an egg in the process of baking aforementioned cake,
so they understood that, you know, sometimes things happen.
And they usually happen when you really don’t have time for them to happen :) of course.
