Because we've decided that the bone-in baked pork chops are better, I bought more and baked them for an hour the same way--salt, pepper, chili powder. This time I served them with Brussels sprout and baked potatoes. (Pasta and rice just seem so boring these days.)
Now a regular part of the rotation, here is more fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken and tomatoes. This was another installment in the adventures of figuring out how to expand the recipe from 8 ounces to 12 ounces (the full box so that there can be leftovers). I think this batch of sauce turned out a bit better than the first attempt to expand the recipe.
Earlier in the day, I made a batch of spring pea soup. (I think that was the name of of it...) With lemon juice and fresh mint, this was even better than the black bean soup.
I'd like to call this bolognese, but it's really just browned ground beef added to an existing jar of pasta sauce. It was tasty.
My plan had been to do a lot of cooking on one day so that my load of dishes would be lighter for the rest of the week. (I'm getting really tired of washing them by hand and have fallen away from my resolution to do the dishes every day.)
I made the chicken pot pie by itself, though--not as part of a great cooking marathon. I had thought there would be lots of leftovers, but it was really good so we ate quite a bit.
The idea of making sauce when I didn't need to struck me as a sensible idea. We had something else for dinner that night, but I only took pictures of the meat sauce.
When LV saw me reading a sidebar about 5 Things You Can Do with Canned Salmon, he turned up his nose at the idea of canned salmon. Most of the ideas sounded pretty good to me, though, so I bought a can when I spotted it on sale that same week.
After all the work I put in to remove the bones and skin (the manufacturers basically turned the fish inside out and shoved it into the can), it was nice to have LV and Scrappy so thoroughly enjoy the finished product. (Although, I have my suspicions that LV was really loving the mayonnaise more than anything else. (I added strawberries instead of mayonnaise to the broccoli-slaw.))
The only pork at the supermarket was a giant family pack with bones. Nothing about the situation said "Foreman Grill" to me. So I went looking for a new recipe online. After seasoning these with salt, pepper, and chili powder, I popped the whole set (eight chops?) in the oven for an hour. We haven't had pork chops from the oven in what feels like years. They went over very well with LV.
I'm not sure I made here... It looks like I piled up steamed baby artichokes, grilled chicken, and shell pasta, then topped it all with alfredo sauce. I think that's what's going on here.
Scrappy really wanted to a way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We all decided cupcakes would be best. This amounted to LV and Scrappy heading out with shopping list that said, "X if it's on sale, or else y." Apparently nothing was on sale that weekend, so I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch. They weren't as soft as the boxed cake mixes and prepared frosting I turned into cupcakes in December, but I was still happy with how the first homemade batch turned out.
Yeah, pregnancy has not turned me off to eating meat. Here we are, three days later, and eating more ground beef. I like to say it's for the iron.
"I can't believe I made meatloaf in March."
"Why can't you believe that?"
"I don't remember it."
"Yeah, you made meatloaf. And it was really good," LV says. He hasn't even looked at the photo. "You left something out. Onions! You left out the onions and it was really good!"
Before the raspberries could go bad, I topped a cup of vanilla yogurt with them. Not the most impressive amount of work, but I thought it looked good.
We hadn't had chicken strips in quite a while, so here I mixed up a batch and served them over salad. (I shouldn't be the only one trying to reach 5 servings a day.)
Having fallen into a pretty bland routine, it seemed time to make the other prepared pork tenderloin. It was still too peppery, but I enjoyed it.
Earlier in the week, I grilled a steak before it turned bad. Then I had to figure out what to do with dried leftover steak. I decided to get a can of beef broth and make some sandwiches. They went over well. Even with Scrappy.
A month ago, I bought all kinds of dried beans, but never really figured out what to do with them. Batches of red beans and chickpeas mostly went to waste, sitting too long in the fridge, waiting to be added to salads or other dishes.
Then I saw a recipe for black bean soup. I thought the idea sounded wonderful--despite having not really eaten any of the beans I'd already bought. The recipe was really exciting to me because all I needed was a regular pot and a blender. The end results were way better than the black soup I order from our local take-out.
Our bananas became ripe too quickly, so I stuck them in the refrigerator (having no idea this would stop the ripening process) and thought the only thing left to do with bananas that brown (on the outside) was to bake banana bread. Even though the bananas were not completely mushy, the bread turned out much better than the last round of nut bread I made.
LV wanted something with chocolate and nuts for around the house. I found Chocolate Revel Bars in the cookbook and decided that could work. The lumpy stuff on top is an oatmeal-based dough. Good stuff.
Then, because I hadn't baked enough that afternoon, I made chicken parmigiana. It was a welcome break from the usual grilled chicken.
I was so excited to turn the leftover loaf of white bread into French Toast. Instead of guessing what the egg mixture should be, I looked up the recipe. It sounded like too many eggs... I don't like to soak the bread, so I was left with the equivalent of three beaten eggs. I scrabbled them. Cinnamon and vanilla seasoned scrambled eggs are weird. And watery. Luckily, the toast was good.
