Meatballs, fries and shakes are not really a sensible dinner — I think that is the point. What else would you eat while watching the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie? Exactly. When we netflixed this a couple of weeks ago this is what we dined on. I think I was still inspired by the Weekend Cookbook Challenge a couple of months back.

I made turkey meatballs instead of the sirloin/pork mix below and also substituted a few other things. I’ve listed my subs below in parenthesis. As far as the movie was concerned, we both enjoyed it…although, I was a bit disappointed there was no Happy Time Harry. Oh well.

Meatballs al Forno
Oh! Oh! This recipe if from Tyler Florence…
1/2 baguette, crust removed
1 1/4 cups milk
1 1/2 pounds ground beef sirloin (I used all ground turkey for slightly less meaty and slightly healthier meatballs)
1 1/2 pounds ground pork
1/2 bunch fresh parsley
1/2 bunch basil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
4 eggs
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/3 cup ground pine nuts
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup dried bread crumbs
1/2 pound chanterelle (or other) mushrooms — I used cremini
2 pints vine-ripened small tomatoes (I used garden tomatoes — a mix of romas and early girls)
1 medium ball fresh mozzarella (I used some smoked mozzarella)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Break the baguette in pieces and soak in a bowl with milk for 10 minutes until the bread is soft. In a second bowl mix the beef and pork (or ground meat of choice) together. Twist up half the parsley and the basil into a little pile, roughly chop it and add to the meat. Add garlic and mix thoroughly with your hands. Squeeze the milk out of the bread and add it in small pieces.

Now, add eggs, Parmesan, ground pine nuts, salt, and pepper and mix everything together thoroughly. Shape the meatballs into large patties then roll them in the bread crumbs. Sing the Aqua Teen Hunger Force theme while rolling the meatballs er…meat wads.

In a large skillet heat the olive oil over medium high heat until it begins to smoke slightly. Fry the meatballs to seal the crust, flip them over so both sides are done. Transfer to a large baking dish.

Next, add a splash of oil to pan and fry the mushrooms on a low heat until they start to caramelize.

Cut the tomatoes in 1/2 and hand-crush them into a separate bowl. Drizzle with olive oil. Add salt and a few cranks of fresh cracked pepper and mix. Add to the mushrooms. Let everything simmer together and reduce slightly for about 10 minutes. Pour the tomatoes and mushrooms over the meatballs.

Shred the remaining basil and parsley and the mozzarella over it. Drizzle with olive oil and add a few cranks of pepper. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes.

Remove and serve over creamy polenta, or if you are going for that ATFH vibe, you will have made yourself some seasoned oven fries and vanilla frozen yogurt shakes to accompany your meatballs.

Matisse & Jacks Bake at Home Energy bars

A cool thing about having a food blog is that every so often people offer to send me stuff to try and write about. This is what happened here — energy bars. Or, in my case, breakfast bars and healthy cookies.

Matisse and Jacks Bake at Home Energy Bars are mixes that you mix together with yogurt and apple sauce (there are other suggested add-ins and recipes on the box). After agreeing to try the Trailblaze Baking Mixes, I was very promptly sent two boxes — the Cranberry Walnut and Chocolate Chip. First up, the chocolate chip.

For these, rather than bake as bars, I chose to follow the recipe on the box for cookies. This entailed adding a couple of eggs, apple sauce, butter, brown sugar and vanilla. When first mixed up, I thought the batter seemed a bit loose, but I let it sit for a minute or two and it was fine. My guess is that there are a lot of grains and grain-like ingredients in there that need to absorb the wet items.

Baked ‘em up and they were all (about 16 cookies) gone within a day and a half. Now, if you go into it expecting a chocolate chip cookie, you’ll be disappointed. They are of course, “healthy” cookies. But, if you go into it expecting a healthy snack — you will love them. At least we did, you might be weird.

A couple of days later I baked up the cranberry-walnut bars for breakfast bars. These did not move quite as fast as the cookies but were still gone within a few days. I thought they were pretty flavorful and good and made for a quick and tasty breakfast.

If you are in California, you can probably find these in a grocery store. Lucky. If not, you can get them online.

Next week there will be more posts…

First off, goodbye Summer theme…hello again Autumn theme! I’ve missed you!

Now, this recipe is from my friend Vanessa. We met at DePaul freshman year of college and then both transferred to other places. We managed to stay in touch for a few years after school, then kind of went on with our lives for a few years after that and just recently got back in touch. Hooray!

She even gave me this awesome recipe for tuna and white beans as a great week night, comforting, quick dinner. It really is…and it fits right in with my (and jwa’s reluctant) goal to eat more economical fish. Frozen tuna is about $6.99/pound at Trader Joe’s. That’s vs. about $20/pound fresh. So, while I will always love the fresh, seared, rare ahi more than anything, it’s good to have a few tricks with frozen tuna. Add this to the list because it’s great!

I didn’t change much from the original, but I did add orange and olives. That’s what so great about this recipe — you can really alter it to fit what you have on hand or flavors that you are in the mood to eat.

Baked Tuna & White Beans from Vanessa
1 medium to large onion, roughly chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
4-5 medium garlic cloves - crushed and roughly chopped
2 cans Cannelloni beans, drained and rinsed
1 lb tuna (defrosted frozen is really good for this — albacore or ahi)
salt and pepper
Olive oil
2 sprigs fresh thyme
Optional: 1 orange, zested and juiced
1/4 cup green olives

Saute onion along with the carrots in olive oil until the onions are translucent. Add garlic and cook (but don’t brown).

Next, throw in drained beans just to get them fusing with onion/garlic/olive oil. Add the orange zest and juice. Salt & pepper to taste.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a casserole dish, add half of the bean mixture to bottom. Sprinkle the beans with half the thyme leaves. Cut tuna into 4-6 chunks so it cooks faster and put on top of beans.

Dump other half of bean mixture over top of tuna. Drizzle with little more olive oil and the feta cheese.

Bake (uncovered) for about 20 minutes or until tuna is cooked/flaky. Before serving, use a spoon to stir everything up so that tuna flakes and is distributed (in small flakes) through beans. Serve with more fresh thyme and green olives.

You could also use fresh basil and Parmesan in place of the thyme and feta. Vanessa first described with with the parm and basil, which I would have done, except the garden thyme was much closer to the kitchen door and it was raining. So there. Also, if you use basil, just add that at the end, after it comes out of the oven.

Here the meal is with some tasty crostini slathered with arugula pesto. How did I make that? Well, a few very big (overflowing, really) handfuls of arugula leaves, about 1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts, 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, 2 garlic cloves salt and pepper. Add to a food processor and combine. Stream olive oil in until it’s smooth and looks like pesto. Get a big bowl of pasta, some crostini or a spoon. All done.

Okay, now off for a bike ride with jwa!

Sugar High Friday, hosted by Cream Puffs in Venice is all about figs this month. Awesome. I really like figs. For this SHF I turned towards perhaps the perfect cookbook for this event — The Girl and the Fig cookbook, one that I really like. In fact, I’m trying to finagle my way into lunch or dinner there next time we’re near Sonoma. But, back to SHF, I’m going to guess I’m not the only one who makes something out of this book given the theme. We’ll see…

Anyway, this was wonderful! A lot of steps, but it makes a great Saturday afternoon project. I did halve the recipe (I used a square 8 inch X 8 inch baking pan) and still ended up freezing about half of it for later snacking — it’s very rich.

Warm Fig & Thyme Crisp with Fig Syrup
Pastry:
2 cups walnut halves
6 tbsp + 3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
4 1/2 cups AP flour
3/4 lb (3 sticks) unsalted butter, thinly sliced
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 egg yolks

Jam:
2 1/2 pounds dried figs (I used about half dried figs and half fresh figs, which, for my halved recipe turned out to be 1 8-oz bag of dried figs and 1 pint of fresh figs)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
zest of 3 lemons
1 bunch thyme, tied with twine
3 tbsp lemon juice

Port-Fig Syrup:
2 cups Port
5 dried Black Mission figs, sliced
1 cinnamon stick
1 clove
1/2 cup sugar

Pastry
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, grind the walnuts (until medium-fine) with the tablespoons of sugar and set aside. Don’t worry, you’ll come back to them, but not until you’re ready to assemble the crisp. Next, mix the 3/4 cup granulated sugar, the brown sugar, salt, baking powder and flour until well combined. Add the butter and mix until the mixture clumps, about 2 minutes.

Add the vanilla and egg yolks to the mixture and mix for 40 seconds. Pack two-thirds of the dough into the bottom of a 9 X 12 inch ungreased pan and bake until it’s lightly golden — about 25-30 minutes.

Jam
To make the Jam, combine the figs, sugar, lemon zest thyme and lemon juice and pour in enough water to cover. Bring to a boil and boil for 10 minutes. Don’t be shy with the water. I was kinda skimpy and had to add more water half way through cooking. Go ahead and really cover everything from the beginning.

Reduce the heat and simmer until the figs are tender, about 30 minutes. Remove the thyme. Puree the mixture in a food processor.

Syrup
Heat the figs, port, cinnamon and clove in a pan over medium heat and reduce to about 1/2 cup. Strain the sauce, pushing on the figs to get as much juice out as possible. Whisk in the sugar and serve.

Assembley
Spread the jam evenly over the baked dough.

In a bowl, crumble together the remaining third of the dough with the walnut and sugar mixture. Sprinkle this mixture over the jam and bake for about 50 minutes. (If you make a half recipe in a smaller pan, give it about 35 minutes).

Cut into pieces and serve warm with vanilla ice cream (or frozen yogurt) and drizzle with the port sauce. So amazingly decadent! And delicious!

Thanks again to Ivonne for hosting and coming up with a tasty theme! I can’t wait to see all of the fig recipes.

I am very pleased to announce, thanks to Sara, that I am guest hosting October’s Weekend Cookbook Challenge! Hooray! And the theme is…Halloween.

Boo!

Now, you might be thinking, hmmmm, Halloween…what can I make for that? Well, my answer is, pretty much anything — pumpkins, root vegetables, snacks for trick-or-treaters, dishes for Halloween parties, perhaps even a super-scary Sandra Lee recipe — ha! Really, anything that can be remotely tied into Halloween will work..I’m not picky.

Of course, since this is a cookbook challenge, you should try to get your recipe from a cookbook, but if you see an amazingly awesome Halloween recipe in a magazine that you really want to use for this, I’m not going to stand in your way. See? Not much pickiness.

To participate, please make a recipe and post about your dish and send your entry to mlbATjemangelavilleDOTcom by Sunday, October 21. I will plan on getting the recap up very soon after that. Thanks again to Sara for generously letting me host this month — I’m very excited. I hope everyone has fun with this challenge! Please feel free to email if you have any questions.

So, I was all set to do an Indian-inspired Mahi Mahi next when Guilty Carnivore sung the praises of Tilapia in a recent comment. I am very easily influenced by the things that I read so I decided to pick some tilapia up on the way home last week — $5.99/pound at the Whole Foods by work (if I remember correctly). The Mahi Mahi in the freezer will have to wait until next weekend. I’m sure the Mahi Mahi won’t mind — it’s hanging out by some vodka.

I wasn’t sure of what to do with the tilapia first. I saw a recipe where prosciutto is wrapped around it and the fish is grilled with sage. I even considered throwing some Parmesan into that equation, but after being mocked by jwa last week for cooking fish with bacon, I decided to try a different approach this time.

What I ended up with was actually pretty good — kind of like a fish lasagna. Both jwa and I agreed that we would definitely eat it again. And there was no bacon or pork products involved at all! Hooray! (or boo!) — I don’t know which one.

Baked Tilapia Layered with Ricotta and Vegetables
about 1 lb tilapia
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 leek, washed well, trimmed and sliced (use a large leek or 2 small leeks)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium zucchini, sliced into rounds
20 shitake mushrooms, stems removed and sliced
1 cup loosely packed baby spinach
3 tbsp (or so) white wine
1 cup low fat ricotta cheese
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
5 sprigs fresh thyme
salt & pepper

On the side
Cooked pasta (parpadelle works well) tossed with:
2 tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup pitted green olives
olive oil
salt & pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Heat a pan over medium heat and add the oil. Sauté the leek, garlic and mushrooms with the dried basil until the veggies are starting to get soft and they have a little bit of color — about 5-6 minutes.

Spread about 1/2 of the vegetable mixture in a casserole dish. It should just cover the bottom. My dish was about 8 inches by 6 inches. If you are using a bigger dish, you may want to sauté few more veggies. Salt and pepper the fish on both sides and lay that down on top of the veggies and sprinkle with the wine.

Next comes the spinach. Lay that down and spread the ricotta over it. Finish it off with the remaining vegetables and the Parmesan cheese. Drizzle with a little olive oil and lay the thyme sprigs on top.

Bake in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the spinach, veggies and wine have given off some liquid. My theory was that this would help the fish stay nice and moist while the top got a bit golden. I think it worked well.

So you see, I didn’t lie about the liquid in the pan after removing a piece. I chose to not cook the spinach first so it gave off some water. This didn’t bother me but if you want less liquid after baking, just sauté the spinach with the veggies and just add it that way. Anyway, after it comes out of the oven, let it all sit for a couple of minutes and serve with the pasta. In a surprising turn, I must say that the leftovers brought for lunch were even better a couple of days later!

Now, back to watching some more Burn Notice episodes! Maybe fish experiment number three will be prepared with only my cell phone, laptop and things I can get at the hardware store. Oh and there will be yogurt.

For this Weekend Cookbook Challenge we’re supposed to pick a cookbook that we want everyone to know about. Well, honestly, this one was pretty easy for me. The Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Herman Loomis is one of my most favorite cookbooks ever. Ever! It’s also one of the first cookbooks I ever bought. From the cover:

“A cook’s two-year odyssey through the small farms, ranches, dairies, vineyards and orchards of America, with 300 recipes fresh from their kitchens.”

For those who like to read cookbooks as a type of story, it really doesn’t get any better than this one. It also has such a great collection of eclectic and interesting recipes. Here are just some I’ve made since I first got the cookbook in 1991:

* Lamb Chops with a Hazelnut Crust and Rosemary Cream Sauce (for jwa’s 27th birthday dinner — for reference, he just celebrated his 36th birthday. Scary!)
* Mary Navarette’s Garlicky Enchiladas
* Chilled Honeydew Soup
* Blueberry Muffins
* Sunburst Lentil Salad

But, for this event, I made something new, “Becky Campbell’s Chicken with Carambola.” Well, I kind of did. See, I thought it was starfruit (carambola) season but I couldn’t find any at all. Anywhere. So, I substituted gold kiwi. I think it worked well but the next time I see some starfruit, I will pick some up and make this again!

Becky Campbell’s Chicken with Carambola
1 3.5 to 4 lb. chicken cut in pieces (since there were only two of us, I used 2 bone-in chicken breasts, which was probably about 1.5 to 2 lb total)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lie juice
zest of 2 limes
2 small onions, peeled and thinly sliced
2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp fresh ginger; minced
1 serrano or jalapeno with seeds; minced
4 carambola (or kiwi if you have to sub) cut in 1/4″ thick slices
salt & pepper
1/2 cup almonds, raw and whole
1 small bunch cilantro

Rinse chicken well and pat it thoroughly dry. In a large bowl, whisk together olive oil, lime juice and zest, onions, honey, ginger and minced pepper. Stir in three-fourths of the carambola slices. Then add the chicken, and turn it until it is coated with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate overnight, or up to 2 days, turning the chicken occasionally so it marinates evenly. I just used a freezer bag and squished it around every so often.

Now, I deviated from the recipe slightly by browning my chicken first. So, season the chicken with salt and pepper and then brown the chicken quickly on each side in a hot pan, about 2 minutes per side. If the skin gets a little too brown (the honey can burn a little), you can always pull the skin off before serving.

Arrange chicken in a single layer in a 9 x 13″ baking dish. Add almonds to the marinade, stir, and spoon it over the chicken. If you used an oven-proof pan to sear the chicken, you can also just do all of this in the pan.

Bake at 375 F. in the center of the oven, basting frequently with pan juices and turning any chicken pieces that get too brown, about 30 minutes. Add remaining carambola, stir, and continue cooking until the chicken is golden and a thigh yields clear juice when pricked at its thickest part, 15 to 20 minutes. Now, for my two chicken breasts, they were in the oven for about 35 minutes total — 25 minutes, then I added the extra kiwi, then about 10 more minutes and they were done. Use a thermometer and check the temp as needed.

Taste the sauce and adjust the seasoning. Just before serving, mince the cilantro if you are using it. Serve chicken right from the baking dish, or divide among four warmed dinner plates. Spoon sauce over the chicken, garnish with cilantro and serve. We had the chicken with jasmine rice made green by some pureed spinach in the cooking broth.

Using chicken breasts with the bone and skin really kept it all moist. All in all, we were both very pleased with this meal! The breasts were so big, we even had leftovers for lunch the next day. As always, thanks again to Sara at Weekend Cookbook Challenge for another great event!

Wow! Two posts in two days! Amazing! Uh, anyway, lately, I have mentioned to jwa (threatened?) that we will be eating more fish — at least two times a week. The problem is, we have expensive, fancy-pants fish tastes. Mostly, we both like salmon, tuna and halibut and that’s pretty much our fish repertoire. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love salmon, tuna and halibut but, those fishes are kinda up there in price.

So, I am starting a new project to try different, more, shall we say, economical kinds of fish. First up? Some frozen “Wild Holland Sole Fillets” that I got at Trader Joe’s. Price: $6.99/pound. Not bad.

After some searching, I came across a recipe that was featured on Cooking Live with Sara Moulton a few years back, that incorporates butter, olives, capers and bacon. See — we are eating more fish because it is healthy. We are eating the butter and bacon to eat more fish. Excellent!

Lemony Sole with Green Olives, Bacon, and Capers
4 (6-ounce) sole fillets
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup chopped green olives
3 tbsp drained capers
3 cloves garlic, chopped or minced
3 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
Beurre Blanc (see below)

Beurre Blanc
1/4 cup white wine
1 shallot, finely chopped (I used extra — mm!! shallots)
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes and chilled
1 tspn fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
Optional: 1 tbsp cream
Optional: 4 more tbsp butter

Combine the wine and shallot in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook until reduced by half. Now, if you are really crafty, before you even add the wine, you will use the pan you used to fry the bacon in. And you will sweat the onion for a few minutes first in residual, after-being-wiped-out, bacon grease. Next after reducing the wine-shallot mixture, add the cream (if using, I did not) and continue reducing until just thickened. Reduce the heat to low.

While whisking constantly, add the butter, little by little, waiting for each addition to be incorporated before adding more, to make a smooth sauce. Here, the original recipe called for 8 tablespoons butter — I reduced that by half. Whisk in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Set aside in a warm area. (The sauce may break if it’s too hot or too cold.)

Dredge the fillets in the flour and season with salt and pepper. Preheat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the 2 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon butter and heat until hot.

Add the fillets and cook, turning once, until just cooked through, about 4 minutes. Remove to a plate and keep warm with foil.

Remove the skillet from the heat, add the olives, capers, and bacon, and stir, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom, until the mixture has warmed through. If you have a lot of brown bits to scrape up, I found that adding about a 1/4 cup of white wine worked well.

Add the beurre blanc and parsley and stir to combine. Spoon the sauce over the fillets and serve immediately with rice or orzo.

The verdict: Come on, it had butter and bacon. Of course it was really good! I tried to healthy it up just a little by using olive oil instead of vegetable oil, decreasing the pan-frying butter to just one tablespoon and reducing the sauce butter to 4 tablespoons. Eh, fine, it’s still not exactly a healthy meal but it was a wonderfully successful fish experiment. And the huge side of steamed broccoli counts towards the healthy. So there.

Next up in the new kinds of fish experiment? Mahi mahi — probably next week.

I have been meaning to make a blueberry pie all Summer — in fact, I have always wanted to make a blueberry pie. Unfortunately, I hadn’t done so yet but then I came across some tasty looking berries at Limbo and was inspired. Sure I was hot and yes, I was kind of lazy. That’s when I decided a blueberry crumble would be just as good. It was. Was there really any doubt? Nope. So, grab yourself some blueberries, a lemon, some assorted crumble accoutrements and you’re all set.

And, as if that was not enough, as an experiment, I mixed up some plain, non-fat yogurt, seeds from a vanilla bean, a little sugar and some cinnamon and threw it in the ice cream maker. I didn’t strain it or anything, just mixed it all up and that’s it. I ended up
with some pretty tasty non-fat frozen yogurt for the top of the crumble.

Blueberry-Hazelnut Crumble
Slightly based on a crumble recipe from the Whole Foods web site
2.5 cups blueberries (about a pint)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tbsp flour
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oats
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
4 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse the berries and drain thoroughly. Put the blueberries in a mixing bowl and add lemon juice, sugar and one half tablespoon of flour. Set aside until you are all ready with the crumble topping.

In a food processor, pulse together the remaining ingredients until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs. Okay, fine, course breadcrumbs made of butter, oats, sugar and nuts.

Combine, and pour the blueberries into four 1 1/2-cup ramekins. You could, of course, just make one big crumble in a 9-inch pie pan. Next, cover the berries with the topping and bake for thirty minutes until the top has browned and the fruit is bubbling.

You may have a little topping leftover — just store it in the fridge and make yourself another small, single-sized crumble one night after work. Shhh!

Can be served hot or at room temperature. Goes very well with ice cream or frozen yogurt — store bought or experimental.

Coming up also this week: a fish dish with olives, capers and…bacon (!) and September’s Weekend Cookbook Challenge from one of my most favorite cookbooks of all time.

Over Labor Day Weekend, jwa and I headed to the coast to celebrate his birthday. We had a really nice time and a dinner that was so good I’m pretty positive that I’ll be making it again soon. It’s always a little challenging working in an unfamiliar kitchen but this worked out pretty well.

I put the marinade together at home and brought it to the beach in a cooler and we picked up some halibut in Cannon Beach at the Ecola Fish Market. The original recipe was for tuna (on epicurious.com) but it was great with the halibut. Plus my new favorite thing to do is toss avocado with fish (salmon, tuna, halibut, etc…) and this fit that bill perfectly.

Marinade:
3 tbsp unseasoned rice vinegar
2 tbsp finely grated peeled fresh ginger
2 tbsp peanut oil
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 serrano chile, seeded, minced (or a pinch red pepper flakes or a few dashes chili oil)

Along with…
halibut (about a pound for two)
Pasta (linguine, fettucine, etc…)
1 avocado
1 lime
sesame seeds
more cilantro
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium carrots
1 medium zucchini
red pepper flakes
salt

Mix the marinade ingredients together and marinate the halibut for about an hour. Meanwhile, clean the carrots and use a vegetable peeler to make very thin strips.

Do the same with the zucchini. Add a little olive oil to a pan and saute the vegetables with a little salt until tender and starting to get a little color.

When the fish is ready, heat a little olive oil in a pan and grill on the stove top for a few minutes on each side until done to your liking. You can bring the marinade to a boil and then simmer for a few minutes to mix in with the pasta and serve with the fish. You can also double the marinade recipe and use half for the fish and half for the pasta/serving.

Dice the avocado and toss with the juice of a lime, chili flakes, salt, sesame seeds and extra cilantro.

To serve, pile the pasta in a big bowl and top with the halibut and avocado.

The Lighthhouse
Manzanita, OR

As if the meal wasn’t enough, we also found a pretty nice place to stay in Manzanita. It’s a 1/4 of a block off the ocean and has a balcony with a great view. It’s also cheaper than Coast Cabins, has a nice kitchen and (imho) is in a better location.

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View of the couch, kitchen and dining area

Sleeping alcove

“living room” area and balcony

View from the balcony

Pros: nice atmosphere/interior, great location, full kitchen (microwave, stove/oven, fridge, sink), balcony with ocean view, cozy, good comparative price

Cons: couch smelled a little like dog (pets are allowed), have to light burners with a match, uh, that’s all I can think of!