I bought the largest package of Italian sausage I had ever seen. Three dinners? Four dinners? Three dinners. I can get three dinners out of this package. The first dinner I had planned to make was sausage & peppers, but green peppers weren't in this week. Meat sauce it is. I added shredded cheese under the sauce for this plate. It's not even close to tasting like baked ziti, but at least I won't have so much cheese left to expire.
This only happened because in my head I had been creating an argument for why it doesn't matter if what I cook tastes good. I don't wave a magic wand and food appears. We're talking about the practical application of timing everything (trips to school, feeding the baby, etc.) and combining what I have on hand. Saying it tastes good doesn't really matter. You're going to have to eat it regardless. Can we appreciate how I was able to work around whatever obstacles popped up that day (including the great "I don't feel like it" hurdle)?
So I roasted chicken legs and potatoes. But I was no longer thinking in dinner mode by the time Luis served himself. I knew there were two lunches still in that pot, but thinking they were too hot to put in plastic containers just yet, I set it aside and completely forgot about it. No pictures of dinner. No lunches for later in the week. Just garbage. Hopefully I'm now that I've proved my own point—that I normally do a terrific job of pulling it all together—I can go back to doing a terrific job.
Low light photography should not be attempted while holding a baby. Camera shake ensues...
Baby Arugula looked really good this week at the grocery store. I can make salad with the leftover chicken, I thought. When I actually went to make the salad, I realized I shouldn't have turned up my nose at all the tomatoes. What was I going to put on this salad besides chicken? I chopped up an apple. I sliced up a red onion. I found some sliced almonds that had been overpowered by the hazelnuts they were sitting next to. And voila. Dinner.
I completely forgot to take a picture of the turkey. Scrappy and LV said it was delicious. These are the empty containers from the leftovers...
I had never seen Food Wars before, but this weekend LV watched a few episodes. Therefore, I saw most of two episodes. And like most people watching food shows, I thought, I would eat that... One episode featured Juicy Lucy's of Minneapolis—burgers with cheese inside the patty rather than on top. Both of the featured restaurants used slices of American cheese, but all I had was shredded Cheddar. They were pretty easy to make and didn't create nearly the mess I feared they might. Shredded mild cheddar was all wrong for this recipe, though. It doesn't turn to cheese sauce and it doesn't have enough bite.
There was leftover pork roast in the fridge and lots of pasta in the cabinet. That didn't sound particularly good together until I decided to toss them with the leftover broccoli-slaw.
It's hard to imagine getting a boiled egg wrong, but, yeah, I managed that. Somewhere along the way I decided that the recipe said to boil them for 15 minutes. After two or three minutes, a little voice said, "Hey. I don't think that's right." So what happens when the eggs are brought to a boil, endure a hard boil for a few minutes, and then rest in that water for another 15? This batch ended up a layer of egg white that clung to the shell. It was like peeling away to find a white yolk. But they tasted fine. Even the few I cracked before I dropped them in the water. (Oops.)
We couldn't not have wings for the tournament... I bought a jumbo pack a week or two earlier and froze them. They were still frozen two days after I moved them to the fridge. My plan had been to broil them as usual and then leave them in the oven for a bit, but it was way too hot in the oven. I moved them to the microwave instead. I love the microwave. All the chicken was completely cooked, and after two batches (a honey bbq I made up and the usual buffalo) we were completely stuffed.
As far as I was concerned, PTI had ended a "long" time ago. Sports Center had been on for almost 10 minutes. "Have you made a decision about dinner?"
"No... But we always eat out once during the weekend. So, either we eat out today or we eat out tomorrow."
"Or we eat out Sunday? What are you saying? You can't eat Italian sausage without the peppers?"
"No, I can."
And then I made LV go buy rolls so we could eat the leftover sausages.
Bunches of fresh broccoli's been on sale around here the past few weeks. I didn't feel like dumping raw broccoli on everyone's plate, but I also didn't feel like getting more pots dirty than necessary. So when the chicken was almost ready, I dropped the broccoli into the roasting pan and let it steam/boil in there.
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.
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...
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...
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.
Roasted chicken breast... Hopefully I made some sort of vegetable to go with this. It looks kind of sad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
