Whole Story

Your best meal of this week may just be my best meal of next week. Best, of course, is highly subjective. It could be healthy, super quick, inexpensive, fabulously delicious - or a combination of all that and more. Whatever your criteria, we want to hear about your Best Meal of the Week. We'll do this post from time to time and we'll feature ideas from readers as well as include some of our own. From Kimberley, a reader: My best meal this week was a good hamburger. The quality of beef from Whole Foods is top notch and the beef makes the burger. I grilled the burger (seasoned with salt, pepper, green onions, and Worcestershire sauce) medium well, put in it a whole wheat bun, with some cilantro pesto, arugula, and tomatoes. It was the best burger I've had in a long time, and it was homemade. From Betsy, a team member: My best meal this week was a Middle-Eastern-themed dinner inspired by a couple of recipes in Mark Bittman's new book: Food Matters. In an effort to follow Bittman's advice and incorporate more vegetables and whole grains in my diet, I decided to make a meal centered around his "Tabbouleh My Way" recipe. This hearty tabbouleh features a cooked grain (quinoa was my grain of choice) dressed traditionally with olive oil, parsley, mint and fresh lemon juice and then mixed with several cups of chopped vegetables (radishes, celery, carrots) and beans (I used thawed frozen baby lima beans). To round out the meal, I served a simple chopped cabbage salad (also a Food Matters recipe), falafel from a boxed mix spiced with parsley and chopped onion, tahini and pita. It turned out that I didn't need to round out the meal, as the lemon-scented, flavorful tabbouleh was the shining star of the dinner table. Even my husband, a vegetarian who doesn't care much for salads or vegetables (go figure), took a second helping. And the best part of my best meal of the week? Lots of tasty leftovers that I'm guessing will get even better over time. Thank you, Mark Bittman. From Winnie, a team member: In my lifetime, I've eaten nearly 28,000 meals (assuming 3 meals a day everyday for the last twenty five plus years) and to be honest, I probably can't even recall 1% of that total. To me, the best meals are the ones that defy the odds of being 1 in 28,000 and somehow manage to be memorable. For the past six months, I've been training for a half marathon and yesterday after our final practice before the big race, our coach graciously picked up pizza for our entire class. Being vegan, pizza is usually a difficult thing to enjoy with a group of people, so I was overjoyed when she managed to conjure not only vegan pizza, but absolutely delicious vegan pizza. The memory of cheese-free pesto, roasted garlic, eggplant, sundried tomatoes and olives on perfectly crisp crust tantalizing my taste buds while enjoying a post workout "glow" and receiving encouragement for a upcoming race will certainly be one that sticks. Not every meal can serve as a reminder of the pay offs of hard work, the camaraderie of collective goal setting and not being afraid to ask for what you want.