Quarantine Cooking: Beet and Goat Cheese and Walnut Salad for Lunch and Angel Hair with Sausage Marinara for Dinner

My husband is not a fan of beets, nor goat cheese--and gulp, I'd had them both in my fridge for months. And so last night, I promised a neighbor lunch today of a salad. I assembled hers first. I already had a dressing made, which I call Everything but the Kitchen Sink: walnut oil, olive oil, honey, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, soy sauce, chopped shallot, salt and pepper--into which I squeezed even more fresh lemon. I also toasted some walnuts from my freezer.

After I delivered the salad, I needed to make my own. I knew that I wanted to toss the sliced beets and arugula in my balsamic dressing and then sprinkle the crumbled goat cheese and toasted walnuts atop.

I so wanted a glass of Chardonnay with lunch for such an elegant salad, but I've been drinking way too much alcohol during this quarantine. At work, I drink sparkling water and since today was a Friday and technically a work day even though my tasks and meetings were sparse, I consumed a nonalcoholic lunch. Delicious though.

For dinner, I wanted to use up the Italian sausage I had cooked up for a pizza, use up the rest of box of opened Angel Hair,and a jar of the marinara we had preserved from last summer. I cracked open a new container of grated Parmesan and chopped some basil from the plant on my kitchen sill.

Neighbors had come over, and so I switched the pots of boiling water and simmering spaghetti sauce to finally cook dinner when they left. Unfortunately, I didn't switch the dials on the burners.  Aargh. I burned the sauce, but I was able to salvage what was on top of the carbon crust for the rest of the angel hair and no leftover sausage marinara:( OH well. A neighbor gave us half a small loaf of sourdough, and it was so fresh that I didn't want to toast it. I buttered it lavishly instead to eat with my pasta and glass of Merlot. I hadn't eaten spaghetti for a couple weeks, and so I relished it.