Spaghetti and Meatballs

"Do you need me to bring anything home?"

"No, just yourself."

About ten minutes later, I realized I should have checked around before saying I didn't need anything. We were out of pasta sauce and meatballs were on the menu. Oops.

I had can of crushed tomatoes in the cabinet. No paste. Not a lot of vegetables to choose from. Just the can of tomatoes. So I decided I would figure out how to make that one can taste like a good sauce. Garlic, olive oil, a beef cube, and a lot of time simmering led to what I decided was an all right sauce. LV seems to be allergic to oregano, so I used basil. If anything, it looked good--a chunky sauce instead of the usual Prego over steamed asparagus.

Steak and Spinach

I decided I should be eating more dark leafy greens. And what's darker and leafier than fresh spinach? I just didn't realize how boring a big bag of spinach could taste. So, this is me trying to dump some of my spinach on LV. He has some pasta, too. (The rest of the pasta became his lunch for the week.)

I stuck with lots of boring spinach. The steak helped.

Broiled Lamb

We went grocery shopping at a lager store this week, so they had lamb chops, and pears, and bags of frozen fruit. It was all kind of exciting. This is broiled lamb chop buried under peaches and pears that simmered in a concoction of apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and I forget what else... That thing next to it is a biscuit. (I didn't feel like rolling them out and cutting shapes, but, after eating the dropped variety, I remember why sometimes it's worth it to make the extra effort.)

National Pie Day, Smoothies, and Liver

Friday was National Pie Day, but LV wanted us to come meet him for dinner. That didn't leave Scrappy and I enough time to pick a pie recipe, shop for ingredients, and make a pie. She and I went shopping and put off the baking until the next day.

Scrappy picked the Chocolate Bar Pie recipe, which doesn't actually get baked. It's made of melted chocolate bars, melted marshmallows, heavy whipping cream, and... that's it. You end up with a kind of mousse that you scrape into a pie dish and freeze for 8 hours. The crust is baked concoction of chopped walnuts, butter and sugar, but really all you taste is chocolate.

After all the hours of waiting, she said it was her favorite pie.

Seeing as the food processor was already out and now needed to be washed (I had used it chop the walnuts), I thought it would be best to try out how well it made smoothies. This is frozen cherries and frozen peaches with not enough milk.

Why stop there? I had read liver was a really good source of iron, but there were only two recipes for liver in the cookbook I like: liver pâté or liver and onions. I went with liver pâté. All seemed to be going well, and it tasted all right while it was still warm (cooked in the skillet and then puréed), but a pound of liver is just too much.

Spicy Pecan Pork Sandwiches

Because I still didn't feel like grilling, I went back to a recipe I tried once in 2007. Back then I didn't have the food processor. Now that it had made it's way onto the countertop, I had a much easier time creating the breading of toasted pecans. The most exciting part, though, was finally baking potatoes that looked and tasted right. (I always seem to undercook them.)

Spaghetti Pie

Again, I felt like making something different, something I marked in the cookbook two years as a possibility. This was easy enough to make (cooked spaghetti topped with browned beef and other things you would add to lasagna baked for a relatively short time), but it just didn't feel as much like "dinner" as I wanted it to. Maybe I'm just a lot hungrier these days...

Lemon Pepper Chicken Toss

I didn't feel like any more grilled meats, so I took out the cookbook to see what I could do with what I had around the kitchen. This is sauteed floured chicken with lemon juice, capers and cherry tomatoes with bow-tie pasta. I thought it was good. Scrappy was not a fan.

Nut Bread

I needed something new to eat for breakfast, so I made a loaf of nut bread. It seemed a bit bland (there weren't very many dried cranberries left to add to the dough), so I added some chocolate chips. Still a bit bland, but at the same time still good.

A Week of Lunches

LV was decidedly tired of bringing sandwiches for lunch every day. This was obvious from the way that turkey and other deli selections seemed to be piling up in the meat drawer. All the bread seemed to only be used for making a "toasty sandwich" every other morning (one piece from the pound of ham between two pieces of toast). We agreed maybe he should bring leftovers for lunch.

With the new objective, I seasoned all the pork, grilled it, and let it chill for a bit before chopping it up and adding it bowls of pasta. I also made macaroni & cheese to create a little variety. "I don't want to eat the same thing everyday" had been a stipulation of taking leftovers.

That's all the juice that oozed from the pork while it sat in the fridge. It looked like some sort of meat pancakes drenched in syrup.

On-Demand Pasta

For what seems like weeks now, LV has been after the perfect bowl of creamy pasta. One night he went out and bought a package of Pasta-Roni's imitation fettuccine alfredo. Another day we went to a restaurant that used to served big bowls of chicken alfredo. Then we tried a frozen Bertolli pasta dinner that was supposed to be in a creamy sauce. Finally, tonight I sent LV to the grocery store to get a carton of heavy cream and a box of fettuccine. Why not just make it myself?

The cookbook described alfredo sauce as "satiny." Mine was definitely not. But LV still said it was the "best pasta I've ever had" and that I've set the bar too high, like from now I'll be able to make whatever it is he's looking for when he's looking for it.

Cranberry Pecan Scones and Chicken Salad

After compiling a list of my favorite 2008 food pictures, I was motivated to make scones again. The last time I made them they were so perfect. This time they were not. The dough is supposed to be shaped into an 8-inch round and then sliced into wedges. This is not a wedge. My ingredients (and then my dough) grew too warm because I was distracted while baking. So I ended up making lumps of dough. (It was way too stick to handle.) They taste good. And they make a much better breakfast than the cookies I've been eating.

For dinner, I topped baby spinach with loads of red ingredients--red onions, strawberries, grape tomatoes,...--and freshly grilled chicken. Because I'd already spent the morning baking scones, I didn't feel like baking any biscuits to go with the salad. That was okay, though. It left Scrappy plenty of room for her "favorite" chocolate cookies.

Wings & Rigatoni

Weeks ago I bought a package of wings and then stuck them in the freezer. All sorts of other goodies were also added to the freezer that haven't exactly been devoured. Thus, the wings for Football Sunday had some company--bagel bites and pigs in blankets. A plate like that will leave you not wanting to stay put the couch while you contemplate what you've done to yourself.

LV said he had seen a commercial for meatballs, and that sounded like a really good idea for dinner. I didn't want spaghetti. I made what was left of a box of rigatoni. Then I added all the frozen vegetable that would have been on the side to the pot of meatballs. That probably would have worked better with more delectable vegetables.

Macaroni & Leftovers

First we had leftover kiwis and leftover strawberries over pancakes. (It's been a really long time since we've made pancakes.)

Then I made macaroni & cheese to go with all the leftover meats we had in the fridge--a package of hotdogs that weren't opened during the week Scrappy had off of school, leftover steak, and leftover pork. LV had steak and hotdogs. It had to be better than my pork.

Extra Crispy

LV once raved about some Shake-n-Bake potato wedges he had many years ago, so any time we have a bag of potatoes in the house I feel compelled to make something like that. Usually I put the wedges in the oven and wonder why they still taste raw 30 minutes later. This time, I thought I should give them more than 30 minutes--more like 45. What came out were burnt and dried up husks that vaguely tasted like potatoes. That big glob of ketchup was to help me avoid throwing them all in the garbage. LV claimed the potato wedges tasted good. I think the steak was much better.

Grilled Pork

Continuing to keep boring grilled meats at bay, I dumped whatever I thought would taste good enough if sprinkled on top of the pork. (No one said real dry rubs were being utilized in this fight...) Some paprika, chile powder, and... I don't remember coat the top. The baby carrots were growing old, so I divided what was left and called it a meal.

Grilled Chicken and Twice-Baked Potatoes

Again, in my attempt to fend off boring grilled chicken, I decided to mix balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, and a bunch of Mrs. Dash (we don't have any salad dressing in our fridge--that would have been easier) to marinate what I thought were going to be a few chicken breasts but turned out to be lots of strips packed together.

I wanted to make twice-baked potatoes, but didn't bake the potatoes initially for a long enough time, couldn't get the insides to mash, fed it into the food processor, and would up with potato chowder-filled baked potatoes. It could have been worse.

Can't Rush the Holidays

Early in December, I bought all the ingredients I would need to make lots of cookies. And pies. And who knows what else. Come 2009, I have hazelnuts, pecans, walnuts, almonds, chocolate chips, dried cranberries, and more crowding my cabinets. January 5 seemed like a good day to bake more Christmas cookies.

I have two cookie presses. Neither has ever been used by me. I'm not sure either will ever be used again. I wasn't particularly impressed with my handiwork, but the Hazelnut Spritz cookies tasted really good.

When I bought Hershey kisses, I thought I was buying them for the kind of cookies that have a peanut butter base... But it turns out the recipe I had was for a chocolate base. It looks like a whole lot of chocolate going on (I didn't roll them all in powdered sugar because that seemed a little excessive), but it tastes just right.

Steak, Well Done

This actually isn't nearly as "done" as it looks. For about four hours at a super low temperature, I let this sit in the oven. Then I popped it it the broiler, and the flames charred everything--onions, etc.--that had been sitting on top. Although I had bought a bag of potatoes that week, I made the instant kind to go on the side.