Giving Lambchop a Fighting Chance

A few weeks ago, Zack read this article in the New York Times. "Did you see this?" he pestered me. "We should eat more like this." So I, being the accommodating girlfriend that I am, made an effort to make our meals more like this.

For those of you too lazy to read the article, it basically talks about the merits of eating less meat (not no meat, just less). Having grown up in the land of tofu, I feel pretty much the opposite of that sentiment. "Meat!" I grunt. "Bring it on. Extra bloody. I will suck on the bone marrow!" (No, I haven't had bone marrow yet. We should go! Yes, I mean you.) However, we're getting our CSA deliveries every week now, and I basically have more vegetables than I know what to do with, so I can see the merits of eating more veggies and less meat.

Tonight for dinner, I throw together what is rapidly becoming my go-to salad: baby arugula (thanks, CSA), cherry tomatoes, avocado, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and a few shavings of Parmesan cheese. It is really good, plus it uses up a lot of lettuce and I get A LOT of lettuce every week now.

I moved on to polenta (which you've all seen me make a thousand times. Click here if you feel nostalgic) with sauteed swiss chard. The more CSA veggies I eat, the more I feel like Alice Waters. Instead of cooking really complicated things, I just get really good produce and cook it simply. I sauteed half an onion in some olive oil, chopped up my beautiful rainbow swiss chard and threw it in the pan. After it wilted, I hit it with some salt and pepper. Super easy and delicious. Anyone could do it.

I finished my plate with some tiny loin lamb chops. I figured, if I'm going to eat less meat, it may as well be a really good cut. I just sprinkled some salt and pepper on them and threw them in the broiler. They sure were tasty.

Here's our meal after I ate half of it and then decided to take a picture with my cell phone. I miss my camera.