An extra challenge

This weekend, my 16-year-old cousin came to stay with me because his dad was in the hospital. For the purposes of this blog, that meant two dinners and one breakfast that had to be somewhat company worthy, and not too weird. I was planning on eating butternut squash this weekend, but didn't think a teenage boy would look kindly on that as a full meal.

So.

Friday night I served rice and beans with tortillas. The tortillas were homemade, which pushed the meal into the special-enough-for-a-guest sphere, and even though I didn't have any meat, I figure beans have protein.

I had a little meat sauce for pasta leftover from another evening, so I figured that would be a good call for Saturday dinner, but I didn't have quite enough to make it a full meal. So rosemary focaccia was the add-on. As I was putting the dough together, I realized how much flour I've been using lately, so I substituted half a cup of flour with cornmeal--very pleased with the results!



This whole weekend I was tempted to go out and buy something. My mom said she would reimburse me for any food I bought since this was a special circumstance. I kept thinking how much better it would be to just buy some cheese and make a full-blown pizza instead of plain foccacia. Or just some ground meat to make chili. Whatever. But I decided not to. I see "hospitality on a budget" as part of the challenge.