Spaghetti and Meatballs

After a week away, I didn't feel like diving into anything too complicated. (Not that I've been diving into anything complicated lately...) Mushrooms were on sale, so the sauce includes fresh mushrooms and onions. Nothing spectacular.

Pictures from LV

First we have a picture from LV to demonstrate that I really have been a good influence on Scrappy. When she went out to lunch at Outback, she ordered grilled chicken and green beans. Yeah, that's a kid's meal...

Then we have a picture from LV to demonstrate that he really could eat pizza every day. Even after saying he was not interested in eating and I covered the pizza in mushrooms (one of his least favorite vegetables), he still ate pizza.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

I always seem to focus more on the meatballs than the noodles when taking pictures of this. Mmm... Spaghetti.

Steak

We bought one humongous steak while grocery shopping, and LV said, "What will you guys eat?" This isn't really how the steak was divided, but pretty much...

Crazy Timing

Saturday used to always be movie night. But that was when we used to always eat chicken nuggets, Chinese takeout, or spaghetti. Then we started eating vegetables and some people started to take an hour to finish dinner. Movie night went away.

Last week we bought more popcorn and I was sure we were going to have a movie night again. But we got home from the grocery store and never thought about watching a movie together.

This Saturday we planned. Movie at 5, dinner after, then the usual bedtime routine. In order to really make this possible, I started dinner at like 3:30 in the afternoon. Somehow prepping all the vegetables and grilling chicken and boiling pasta took until almost 5. The pasta salad went into the refrigerator just before the movie, I popped the popcorn, we watched the movie, we ate dinner, Scrappy didn't fuss over the vegetables, and it was a happy Saturday night. Crazy.

Grilled Pork and Baked Potatoes

As bored as I was with pork, I was even more bored with teriyaki marinates. I flipped through BH&G cookbook for more ideas. I came up with a chipotle marinate that I had to drastically alter seeing as I had no chipotle spices. It was like ground cumin + brown sugar + white wine vinegar + some other stuff. It was actually good.

The real hit were the potatoes that took an insanely long time to bake considering how small they are. That's olive oil giving them the crazy hue. A week later, Scrappy and LV were still raving about the potatoes.

Steak and Eggplant

I wasn't sure what to make for dinner. I had little red potatoes and an eggplant sitting in the fridge. I didn't feel like reading how to prepare eggplant, so I thought we would eat the steak with potatoes. Then I thought if I ate any more potatoes (there were a lot of mashed sweet potatoes leftover), I might vomit. But when I went to get the package of chicken out of the fridge, it turned out to be pork. No! No more pork.

I grilled the steak and fried the eggplant. It was all very I-don't-care-I-just-want-to-eat kind of cooking. I ate lots of eggplant and LV ate lots of steak.

Pork Tenderloin

LV really wanted pork tenderloin for dinner. We made a family trip to the bigger grocery store that normally carries it. That grocery store was not carrying LV's pork tenderloin that day.

We bought some other brand in a hickory flavor. Yeah, more pork. It's not like we bought pork futures. We just keep making it for dinner...

The best part (for me) was not the pork. (Shocking.) It was the homemade mashed sweet potatoes. (Yeah, more yams.) I've never boiled then mashed any form of potatoes in my life. I usually make the instant potatoes. This was awesome. I thought they were the greatest thing ever. Scrappy did not. She still thinks only Rainbow Sherbet should have the texture of Rainbow Sherbet. (It was about that temperature by the time she finished her dinner.)

I left the asparagus steaming for way too long. Way too long.

Chicken Pizza

I concluded that chicken pizza is not as filling as pork pizza because the same effort is not required to chew chicken.

Doesn't that sound tempting.

Teriyaki Grilled Pork

As though I haven't had enough leftover pork for lunch, I grilled some more pork for dinner. Yes! More pork marinated in soy sauce with brown sugar and lemon juice and whatever else goes into that mix. I never ever thought I would finish a bottle of soy sauce in my life.