Dinner for Two, Tonight: Soup & Sandwich Menu

This soup is best made with fresh tomatoes in season, but it’s also pretty good made with canned tomatoes in the dead of winter. The garlic is added in two lots here to get two different flavors. The first amount is sautéed with the other vegetables at the beginning of the recipe in good Italian or Spanish fashion. The second goes in near the end to provide a bite. The tomatoes provide most of the liquid. (Note: this recipe serves 2, but I usually double the recipe because it's equally good the next day or frozen for up to a couple of months.)

Egg salad has long been one of my favorite sandwich fillings. In fact, as a kid I never like peanut butter and jelly, but loved egg salad. Every now and then I get a powerful yen for it again and will make up a batch then eat egg salad sandwiches for a week. Sometimes I add capers, chopped dill pickles, chopped celery or chopped green or red pepper to it. I like it on whole wheat, white bread and, my favorite, croissants. I'll make the sandwiches with or without tomatoes and lettuce depending on season and mood. Whatever you prefer, it's good stuff.

When I was a kid (mumble) years ago my mother would sometimes take us to the S&W Cafeteria in downtown Knoxville. For a cafeteria, it was an elegant place dating to the Art Deco era and featuring a huge, sweeping, spiral staircase from the ground level to a mezzanine. The one thing I always got was the wedge of iceberg lettuce with their signature blue cheese dressing (my sister liked the 1000 Island dressing). The other day I made up a batch of my blue cheese dressing and remembered those days of yore. So I bought a head of iceberg and returned to my childhood.

Verrines are essentially a fancy French presentation technique and this citrus dessert verrine shows how easy they can be. All you do is layer ingredients in a clear glass. This verrine is made completely of store-bought ingredients and was inspired by fruit-flavored yogurts (I tend to buy plain yogurt and then add a spoonful of jam to it as a dessert). It's a great ending to a celebratory meal such as a birthday or anniversary.