Day 14: Tasting recipes from Daniel's menu

Today I decided to try a couple of recipes from the Daniel Fast pdf resource on Resurrection Life's website.

The first dish was called White Beans and Sauteed Vegetables, but I substituted black beans for white beans. As I went to gather the ingredients to make this recipe, I could not find any carrots. I could not believe we were out of carrots. We always have carrots on hand. Having scoured the kitchen without luck, I gave up and left them out. In the next step, I fried the vegetables in our cast iron frying pan and, against the better judgement of the recipe's notes, used extra virgin olive oil instead of pure olive oil because we only had the best on hand. The recipe warned that using extra virgin olive oil for frying would make the product slightly bitter and should be reserved for drizzling and other finer tasks. After trying this recipe, I think I agree. Finally, I added the black beans. These dried out easily and didn't warm up much before beginning to shrivel. I think it would have been better to have had white beans to cook instead.

The second dish was Avocado Tomato dressing. I poured the ingredients into the blender and set it to spin. It is better to pulse this mixture because it doesn't blend well in the machine. The recipe called for a teaspoon of herb seasoning, which is not really that specific, so I took a look at the mixture in the blender and then at the spice rack. Italian seasoning seemed like it might be a good fit so I sprinkled it in.

After about a half hour in the kitchen, I set the two plates daintily on the table, said grace, and slowly tasted each dish.

At first, the black bean recipe was only okay. When I sprinkled a little bit of salt over it the dish moved up a notch. The beans were a little dried out from the cooking process, but chewing them they produced a delightful creamy sensation and their most prominent flavor was that of the olive oil.

Next came the salad. The dressing was quite fancy in appearance and was thicker than many other dressings. I pushed my fork through the orange-tan paste with its black flecks and sprinkling of red tomato seeds and listened as it crunched in my mouth. There was a nice slight lemony zest to it, but the most dominant flavor was the seasoning that made it taste like an Italian dressing.

On the whole, I'd say I like the salad better than the black beans, but the whole experience was enjoyable nevertheless.