Beautiful Bones Dinner

Susan from Food Blogga is hosting a calcium-rich event this month in honor of National Osteoporosis Awareness Month. She was looking for meals or recipes high in bone-building calcium. My dinner last night was a bit of a hodge-podge in its creation, but it definitely had a lot of calcium from multiple sources. For those out there wondering about calcium-packed foods, there's a good list in the event guidelines linked above.




I had a lot of veggies that I had meant to grill earlier in the week. Those plans were dealt a blow by our ridiculously high winds, so last night, I really HAD to grill a whole bunch of veggies or risk losing them. Quite honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with them once they were grilled, so I perused upcoming blogging events for some inspiration.

When I first read the Beautiful Bones description, I thought I'd do a main-course salad with lots of grilled veggies, goat cheese, and cooled boiled potatoes. But I was lacking motivation for washing greens and was losing focus more generally due to over-tiredness. Husband called from the other room to say that he didn't care what we ate; that we could have Boca Burgers for all he cared.

So we did.

The burgers went on the grill along with the rolls (Husband was in charge of this part as I had just spent a long while being seared in front of the grill). I had already cooked my potatoes and they are calcium-rich, so I wanted to include them. I pan fried them with some of the grilled onions and mushrooms, while marinating the roasted peppers in olive oil and fresh basil. Some of the excess oil and basil was drizzled over the spuds when they were done, and the burger was topped off with the peppers and a thick smear of goat cheese. We both snagged a few bits of grilled green veggies as a side.

By my count, we had four main sources of calcium: the burgers (being soy-based), the goat cheese, the potatoes, and the asparagus. We also had a variety of other nutrients, many of which no doubt either increase or decrease calcium absorption in the body. With any luck, it was mostly an increase and we were able to use most of what we ate.

Feed your bones, everyone!