Tostadas

There's some sort of leftover meat on these tostadas, but I loaded them up with so much lettuce I can't tell what's under there anymore.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

This is ground beef meat sauce. Not quite as good as the Italian sausage meat sauce, but still enjoyable. And salad. We never have salad...

Butter Cookies

At some point LV left me a note that said, "These cookies are insane they're so good," but I'm not sure if it was this batch...

Pernil

Pork shoulders were on sale. I bought one and put it in the freezer. I just didn't feel like eating it. Weeks went by. I let it thaw for days in the fridge, but to be sure it actually cooked all the way, I turned off the oven a few times during the roasting process and covered it. This might be my favorite batch yet. Or maybe that's because I finally served it with yellow rice.

Chicken and More Potatoes

Roasted chicken breast... Hopefully I made some sort of vegetable to go with this. It looks kind of sad.

Steak and Potatoes

I'm not a fan of "those days." The kind where your dinner ends up on the floor. And it's not even a story worth recounting. Today was that kind of day.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

I reached for the Italian sausage and put it in my basket. What I planned to do with it, I didn't know. Turns out, it made for a great sauce. LV raved about the leftovers.

Salmon Burgers

It feels like it's been a year since I last made these. I didn't know where the recipe was, but I was pretty sure I could wing it. That wasn't the best of plans.
"Are you sure you want all that work?" LV asked. The first two times I made these, I was very meticulous in the way I removed all the little pieces of bone from the fish. And the patties held their shape. These became almost like tuna salad sandwiches. But considering how long it's been and how little fish we have around here, they were good.

Two Meat Combo

There was pork, there was chicken, there was not a lot of time. I decided to mix up some BBQ sauce and hope it tasted like a meal.

Pork Tostadas

The tostadas are becoming my go-to method of recycling leftover meats...

Chicken Pot Pie

I decided to go with a biscuit crust, but didn't make nearly enough dough. I should really start measuring things again instead of guessing.

More Ranger Cookies (kind of)

"I haven't figured out what you put in them, but these are possibly the best cookies I've ever had" was LV's reaction to the last batch. That set the bar a little high. These were good, but not the same as before. (A lot less coconut because I was working with what little was left in the bag.)

Meatloaf on Demand

Looking in the freezer, I announced I had no idea what to do with the leftover ground beef. LV asked if I could turn it into meatloaf. I vaguely remembered the last time I'd made it. There was grainy bread and perhaps too much seasoning. And something else... I came to this site, hoping to find an answer. November 1? I went that long between batches of meatloaf? That seems almost crazy. It's such a wintertime food.

French Dip Sandwiches

Leftover pot roast makes for amazing sandwiches. That's what I've decided. Leftover steak can be tough to chew. Not this. So good.

Chicken Taco

I don't think I've tried the McCormick's chicken taco seasoning before. It's really good. This is chicken breast I roasted a few days ago with melted cheese on a tostada shell.

Shortbread and Whole Roast Chicken

I made shortbread this morning. I made shortbread this afternoon. This is the afternoon batch. It's slightly less toasted-looking. LV had said the pseudo-Ranger Cookies were the best cookies he had ever had. But these were bordering on insanity they were so good. I was like, "Really? Because they melt in your mouth?" And I was joking, but he was serious. "Yes!" Who knew shortbread could be such a hit?

I roasted a little chicken for dinner. Rather than serve it with more potatoes like I have been doing, I made more biscuits. Between the cookies and the biscuits and the chicken, the oven was on pretty much all day. Which was nice because I had decided 58 degrees was plenty warm enough for opening all the windows.

Oh, and those things that look like pickles in the background... I put green squash in the bottom of the roasting pan with the chicken. Luckily I didn't put them all in there. They turned really mushy. I tried to bake them like fries later (again, more with the oven), but that didn't work well. So I served raw squash to Scrappy. I didn't think she'd be down with squishy squash.

BBQ Pork Biscuit

We still had leftover pork in the fridge and I knew no one would be excited to eat it for lunch if I said, "Just microwave it," so I made a big production of lunch. Biscuits from scratch with homemade barbecue sauce and frozen vegetables. Who eats vegetables at home for lunch? Not us...

Chicken and Yellow Rice

I was interested in making dinner using only one pot. So I pulled out the biggest sauteing pan, found its lid, and, voila, only one dirty dish (besides the three plates). First I cooked the chicken, then, after setting that aside, I made the rice in the same pot. We're back to the super thinly sliced chicken. See that shadow under the rice? The chicken is causing that shadow.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

This is leftover sauce with leftover asparagus (not that I made all the asparagus one night—this is just what was left of the bunch). This is also my paper napkin as a diffuser for the point-and-shoot's flash. I'm not sure which is more delightfully lazy: homemade sauce from the microwave or picking up my napkin instead of moving the plate to a better location.

Pot Roast

As long as the oven was on and the baby was agreeable, I made the pot roast today. It was still quite frozen when I put it in the oven, but I think with enough internal cooking time it turned out all right. And there are plenty of leftovers for French Dip sandwiches for LV.

Ranger Cookies (kind of)

Although they require the use of an electric beater, I've really taken to the kind of cookies that children of the Depression era seem to favor. No, they don't *really* require an electric beater, but when your only ingredients are a little butter and a little flour, you better hope you can get that dough as fluffy as possible.

(These aren't really Ranger Cookies because I used a chopped up chocolate bar and pecans instead of dried fruit.)

Italian Sausage & Asparagus

When I purchased the asparagus and the Italian sausage, I didn't see them going together. But come Wednesday, this seemed like a good idea.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

It's spaghetti and half the ground beef I bought this weekend. I'm not thrilled. I was too distracted by a baby who refused to nap to season the meat properly.

Six Weeks Later

So, after the first few tries, I let go of the idea of feeding the baby from a bowl. But he's so close to six months now and waaaay interested in what I'm eating. We went back to giving milk on a spoon a try.