Juicy Lucy

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

More Tostadas and Shredded Cheese

LV said he wanted me to make dinner for Valentine's Day. He would make breakfast. When we looked through the refrigerator, our options for dinner were ground beef, leftover turkey, leftover chicken, or leftover steak. He suggested using the ground beef and leftover tostadas for Mexican pizzas. With some taco seasoning and fresh tomatoes, it didn't feel like we were eating Friday's dinner all over again. Ooh, I forgot to serve the leftover yellow rice. Oh well. We had leftover cupcakes instead.

Bland Steak Dinner

I made this steak on... Wednesday? Yeah. It's been a busy week. I made steak Wednesday, but LV called to ask if I wanted him to bring anything home for dinner. So I told him to bring something to go with the steak—two gigantic bone-in cuts that were slowly baking in the oven. He brought fried rice and egg rolls. Then the next day we had pizza. Then today we had the steak again. (I wanted to make chicken pot pie, but with only $5 on me, I couldn't really get all the vegetables and chicken broth. Tomorrow. I'll make chicken pot pie tomorrow.) Again, I didn't feel like putting much effort into the sides, so here we have plain egg noodles with plain frozen green beans with plain (but really tasty (I took my time comparing cuts this week)) steak. Borrrrring.

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Finally, those homemade meatballs I was talking about... The recipe says to roll out 24, but I wanted big honking meatballs. I made eight. Usually I buy the pre-made turkey version, which comes with maybe a dozen per pack. For the low low price of half as much, I was able to buy double the weight in ground beef and come away with meatballs that left everyone satisfied. Plus the other half of my ground beef pack. Plus two real lunches. There are never enough meatballs leftover from the turkey version to make TWO lunches. It's usually just one sketch lunch. But with REAL meatballs, I was able to turn eight into five meals. Nice.

Good Steak

When I picked up the London broil, I wasn't thinking, Mmm, this'll be good. I was looking more at the size. But oh my god it was so good compared to the beef we've been eating lately. So good. The biscuits, not so much. I thought I had left them in there long enough, but it wasn't the same as the last really good batch.

Tacos

I had second half of a pack of ground beef in the freezer. None of the usual options sounded appetizing to me, so I decided to make tacos. That's imitation shredded cheese. It was fine in the tacos, but, when there aren't so many other foods going into your mouth at the same time, the "cheese" sticks to your teeth. Eek.

Beef Wrapped Peppers

What to do with tough cheap meat... I put it in a zip-top bag, marinated it with balsamic vinaigrette (oh, that's where all that went), then beat it with a hammer. It was still super tough.

Cupcakes and a Pattymelt

By special request, I made more cupcakes. This time I thought the frosting should be green. And the batter should be pink.

After making this sandwich for myself (LV had regular burgers later), I've decided the best way to clean the Foreman grill is to use a piece of bread. So good.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Taking a rest from the adventurous side of the kitchen...

Let's Eat

After having such an easy time preparing the potatoes to add to the pot pie (it's easy to leave things to cook and preheat long enough when there's a baby around to distract you...), I decided to make my own mashed potatoes to go with the pot roast. I liked to think of them as "rustic" with all their lumps and skins, but later it occurred to me that maybe LV and Scrappy thought that was the most disgusting thing in the world and would have much preferred the kind made from flakes. Oh well. I thought it was really good.

Pot Roast

Thinking my parents were coming to visit for Christmas, I bought this pot roast. Then my mom announced they would not make it. So I baked up the meat before it could go bad.

Green Squash!

I know you're supposed to buy in-season locally-grown fruits and vegetables, but I was excited to see something in the produce section that didn't look so yucky. I don't know where it came from or how big a carbon footprint it cost, but that green squash was tasty.

Now What

If Tuesday was the bottom of the barrel, I don't know what today was. I had some ground beef, I had the sour cream left from the coffee cake recipe, and that was about it. So, in a skillet, I combined ground beef, sour cream, ketchup, and some other stuff (the ketchup was a last minute addition when I realized I had no other tomato products and that Scrappy would probably want more flavor than the paprika, salt, pepper, etc.). Only my serving was plated with hot sauce and more sour cream. I also ate later so they could make whatever comments they wanted without me around. (Not that the apartment is so large I couldn't hear them if they had...)

Burgers!

Again, the lack of interest in publishing this photo is rather apparent in a the lack of focus... However, I do take my burgers seriously.

Burgers

You know I'm not really thinking of ever updating my blog again when I take just one lousy picture of what I made... (I think I had also wanted McDonald's for dinner, but LV said he likes my burgers better. And for some reason I was bitter about that.)