Pictureless Feast

Anyhow, tonight we celebrated my mom's birthday, and also had a slide show for our family with pictures from our recent trip.

For dinner I made "Orecchiete with Cherry Tomatoes and Olive Tapenade" from VwaV... it's a great recipe, and I loved it as much as I always do. Luckily, there is some leftover for lunch tomorrow. I also made the AMAZING "Stuffed Collard Greens Baked in Zesty Tomato Sauce" from Modern Vegetarian Kitchen. So, so good. The stuffing was carrots, onions, mushroom, currants, pinenuts, wild rice, bread crumbs, parsley, fresh sage... mmm! They were really fun to make: you boil the collard leaves for 3 minutes, then blot them dry, goop in some filling, and then roll in up in a little packet. They looked great and they were very delicious.

I doubled the Collard recipe, and somehow I ended up with WAY too much tomato sauce, so lucky for us! I jarred it and now we've got two huge jars of homemade zesty red sauce next time we're looking for a quick dinner solution. Nice!

My grandparents brought over two pints of raspberries from their garden, and my aunt and her boyfriend brought me a huge box of fresh figs that they picked earlier today. Score!! I'll be having a fruity breakfast tomorrow!

Sorry for no pics... Maybe I'll take some of the leftovers tomorrow, but for tonight, it's all put away and I'm getting ready for bed.

UPDATE:

Hoorah! Luckily there was enough leftover, that I got a second chance to take a picture. Here you can see the pasta with tapenade and tomatoes, one yummy stuffed collard with tomato sauce, and some of the raspberries from my grandparents' garden. The collards were really my favorite, and they made great leftovers too. Very nice. I blended up the tomato sauce with my handheld blender, which gave it a great, smooth texture. Yum!