Taters, Spike, & Baby Garlic Breath

I don't eat meat, so the standard meat & potatoes dinner isn't something I've ever gotten used to. When I was a kid, I remember having baked potatoes as our main course occasionally. As vegetarians we learned how to make a meal out of a single vegetable. We would slather them with butter, cottage cheese, and ridiculous amounts of brewers yeast. Actually, its brewers yeast that I credit for my low sodium intake. We would use Spike & brewers yeast to season just about everything, so it never really occurred to me to depend on salt for flavoring. In recent years I have learned how to use sea salt and kosher salt in order to extract more flavor from less sodium. When The Carnivore and I sit down to dinner, we almost always bring the pepper grinder to the table, but never the salt shaker (come to think of it, I'm not even sure we have one).

The past few days have been lousy for my culinary creativity. I've been reading my June issue of Cooking Light cover to cover, and Mom found another 10 or so new cookbooks for me at yard sales this past weekend. So while I have ample choices, I've been too busy to make a special trip to the grocery store and, alas, we are stuck with what is left from my Friday shopping trip, which was more or less overtaken by the appetizers I was planning to make on Saturday.

For Tuesday's dinner, I thawed out a broccoli & cauliflower casserole that I had baked & frozen about a month ago. I was planning on making some great dish to go with, but I ran out of time and ended up throwing together some pesto pasta made with whole-wheat fettucine, a jar of Bertolli pesto (which is quite good for something bought off the shelf), and grated parmesan.

Tonight we still had leftover casserole and I didn't plan ahead early enough to make a marinated bean salad (which is what I was craving), so I threw together a big pan of Garlic Roasted Potatoes. I'm not sure where I got the original recipe, but I've been making it for years now and its one of The Carnivore's favorite side dishes.

Garlic Roasted Potatoes

• 4 red potatoes (about 2.5 pounds)
• 12 cloves of garlic (cut in half)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup of olive oil
• 3/4 tsp sea salt
• whole lot of freshly ground black pepper (grind should be as coarse as possible)
• 3 Tbs chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tsp sage
• dash of white wine

1. Throw everything into a roasting pan & cook, uncovered, at 425 degrees for 30-45 minutes.
2. Stir once or twice while roasting

Fat Baby got the grabbies while I was cutting up the garlic, so I held out a piece for him to take a bite. He chomped down on a big mouthful and then kept coming back for more (I shouldn't have been surprised - he ate a handful of cilantro this weekend, and recently sucked all the juice & most of the pulp from half of a lime).