This time the meatloaf tasted better to me. I forgot to throw in all the Italian seasonings (they got sprinkled on top) and I used only beef. It was still not as dry as what I think meatloaf should taste (which is really a good thing), but I enjoyed it. And everyone ate carrots. Success!
That blob on the side? Leftover mashed potatoes from Chicken Delicious. They looked really good before I microwaved them. Then they turned to soup.
I hadn't planned to make oven-fried porkchops, but the idea of breading the pork and eating it with applesauce hit LV hard on the train ride home, so we went to the store, bought some applesauce, and then threw newly-breaded porkchops in the oven. For the breading, I got to use some more of the fresh thyme and rosemary that's still in the fridge.
I didn't feel like making any side other than broccoli. A healthy dash of garlic salt before boiling might have elevated the broccoli might have to "as good as the pork."
My mom once told me, rather out of the blue, that one of the most bland things she'd ever eaten was the stir-fry I made her when she had come to visit me in New York. That particular stir-fry had been the specialty of someone who thought no seasoning should ever interfere with the smell or taste of meat. I didn't know any better. My mom would have been much happier with this stir-fry--it required not only the three tablespoons of soy sauce she didn't get to have with her bland stir-fry, but also fresh ginger, garlic, white wine, and some spicy elements.
I couldn't believe it had been a week since my last post, so I decided to take a picture of my fridge to sort of show that I haven't been eating McDonald's and ordering pizza for a week.
1. CHICKEN QUESADILLAS The night before I made the Veal with Lemon-Capers sauce, I made chicken the way we used to at the old place: salt, pepper, olive oil. If we'd had some Project Runway to yell at and more Heineken, I would have thought it was 100 degrees outside. Three days later, the leftover chicken was marinated with chipotle sauce, chopped and thrown into the tortillas that are labeled in the photo. I assumed we had cheese when I decided to start making quesadillas. We had a lot of Kraft American singles...
2. SPAGHETTI & MEATBALLS It was pretty, but I didn't make the sauce or the meatballs. There's a recipe for homemade pasta in my cookbook, but I certainly didn't feel like doing anything but pouring from boxes, jars and containers that night.
3. CHICKEN DELICIOUS We ordered a roasted chicken (the tinfoil) from what LV thought would be the new Chirpin' Chicken. The chicken was really dry and nothing at all like Chirpin'. But the coleslaw and mashed potatoes were good. Compared to the really dry chicken.
4. PIZZA Tuesday we had Scrappy as per usual, so I suggested making one of the DiGiorno thin crust pizzas. Unlike LV's last oven, the new one has no clock, no timer, and doesn't beep when it's done preheating. Making a post out of his success with frozen pizza might have been rather condescending, though.
I cheated on Valentine's Day... I've been faithfully pulling recipes from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook since January, but I thought Valentine's Day called for something more dramatic. So, I went to Epicurious, where they were promoting Jamie Oliver's Valentine's Day recipe for anchovy-something-or-other or a less scary-sounding recipe for two. I skipped the soccer mom cookbook and the anchovy delight, and went for veal with potatoes.
LV hung out in the kitchen and helped me make dinner, which normally doesn't happen because I feel I can't have a blog if I don't do all the work. But this was better. We were listening to the Billy Joel box set, and probably should have changed it before we sat down to eat. His poppy synthesizer hits don't mesh well with candlelight.
Oh, yeah, and there's a total lack of a centerpiece. It looks like a cat food dish in the middle of the table... LV sent me flowers, I sent him flowers, we didn't need more flowers for the table. Doh. The bowls are from the bread and dipping sauce we were munching on while making dinner.
We've had a lot of leftovers in our fridge for the past couple weeks. Leftover casseroles, lasagna, wings, cheesecake, coffeecake,... So I decided to take what I could and use up as much as possible in one dinner. LV had leftover steak (I guess didn't document that from earlier this week) with wings and mashed potatoes. Then I took the spinach I bought for beef sandwiches that we never made and threw the pork with melon-tomato relish and blueberries on top. My salad was prettier, so it gets the photo.
In the middle of a cold snap, I decided it was time to make a summertime grill recipe... If I make this again when cantalope and honeydew melon are actually in season, it will probably taste much better. It was mainly the watermelon that sketched me out. I got one of those plastic containers from the store that has chunks of random melon in it. Like funny-smelly watermelon. But I'd just read an article about rinsing meat, so I figured rinsing fruit to get rid of sketchy-watermelon-smell couldn't be nearly as riksy as rinsing rancid meat.
Oh. That's the left-over insides of the potato skins making a comeback as mashed potatoes behind the porkchop. They weren't very mashed. I'm used to the mashed potatoes out of a box.
We decided to have a Super Bowl party. That amounted to four people coming over. But that's more of a party than any other Sunday, so I started looking around for what to make. Wings, of course, and Potato Skins. This is a picture of the skins before they went into the refridgerator. I didn't take any pictures when the came out of the oven (cheese was added, sour cream on the side) or of the wings at all because I was more caught up in getting food out on the table. And people might think I'm really bizarre for taking pictures of the food they're about to eat.
At the last minute I realized we had no sort of desert. Everything was salty bar food. To try to get Scrappy more involved, I pitched a couple different chocolate cookie recipes to her. As we were rolling all the dough into little balls, she asked where the chocolate chips were. The "like Oreos" concept apparently hadn't been a clear enough description.
These cookies have gotten so much better over the course of a week. They came out of the oven a little dry, but with all the frosting sandwiched in between (half were vanilla-filled, half were chocolate) they've become more moist. Mmm...
Hash browns always sound good to me. When I saw the recipe for hash browns (not home fries or the green pepper-potato-onion-mush some diners serve), I ran out and bought a bag of potatoes.
I've never peeled potatoes before. I patiently peeled all the potatoes after scrubbing them. Then patiently shredded far too many potatoes because I was being diligent to the recipe. Then I got tired; Breakfast for Dinner is supposed to be quick and happy. I decided the potato shreds did not need to be rinsed.
First the potatoes turned a rust color. Then they turned gray.
It looks like a photo of a giant sausage patty or something encrusted with pecans. There is sausage in the picture, but mainly you're looking at the hasbrowns. They were so gross. Much as LV told me they would be fine--there are dirty potato chips that aren't washed at all--he wasn't about to finish the leftovers. If I hadn't started drinking Heineken while peeling potatoes, I probably wouldn't have been able to eat more than a few forkfulls.
Fewer potatoes, more rinsing next time.
