Bacon Wrapped New Year

When we invited LV's family to come over for brunch the day after Christmas, I thought I would make mini quiches and a ham and I don't know what else. They declined the offer, but I still wanted to try making mini quiches. So I made them on New Year's Eve (and added way too much salt). Luckily, one of the recipes I found online said that they freeze really well. The three of us weren't about to eat two dozen of these before midnight.

Mini quiches seemed appropriate because I wanted to try wrapping bacon around anything, and bacon and eggs go well together, right? So, I just had to decide what I was going to wrap the bacon around (after I found which store had bacon on sale). Apples became my answer. (Again, I have a lot of time to ponder life's mysteries...) Apples are cheap and they would give it that sweet-salty combo. And if that didn't work well enough, then there would always be mozzarella sticks... wrapped in bacon.

The heartburn was pretty extraordinary. But bacon wrapped goodies are still tasty the next day during your Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

Adventures in Lamb

When I saw this picture, I couldn't remember what it was or what I had been thinking. Then I saw the finished picture.

Oh... Lamb. Because it was super cheap... All these weeks later, I have to say, this was a pretty gross dinner. Mostly because the meat tasted awful and had a really rough texture. My lazy way of creating a breading, my peach-ginger chutney? Those were really good. But not good enough to compensate for starting with icky-tasting meat.

Burgers

Mmm... This was a good batch of burgers.

This was me trying to make the frozen green beans more exciting.

Banana Bread

More bananas ripened more quickly than I could eat them. Hence, more banana bread. This batch was really good considering I had so much more practice with when to cover the loaf with foil. Mmmm... Breakfast for the week.

Salmon Burgers and Broccoslaw

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.))

Berries, Yogurt, and Chicken

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.)

I seem to have forgotten something...

Thursday night we went shopping and I saw a bottle of dressing I wanted to try. We never have dressing in the house, but raspberry vinaigrette sounded good. At lunch I decided to try it with all the green peppers, mushrooms, and cucumbers I had on hand. I diced them up, but thought they looked kind of sad. So I added the little bit of pasta left from earlier in the week.

I seem to have forgotten an ingredient in these muffins... I was so excited to make muffins with big frozen blueberries, and then I forgot to add the baking powder. They look like bricks, but they taste okay. A little solid. Like a weird scone.

Luckily the rest of dinner was better. (And the muffins did get eaten.) I thought this might be an overload of fresh vegetables for one day, but it actually didn't taste that way. (There is a lot of turkey hidden in there.) Yay for me...

Smoothies and Chicken

Feed me... I swear the food processor is calling to me. This time I used cherries, mangoes, pineapple, melon, and skim milk, and then blended it for much longer than last time. It was much easier to drink.

Dinner was back to boring grilled chicken. Nothing fun to spice it up. (But it still tasted good.)

Burgers

I set aside some of the guacamole ingredients to use as burger topping later in the week because LV had raved about the magic that an avocado can add to a burger. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of leftover ground beef to work with for making burgers. There was almost more avocado than burger...

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.

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.

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.

Birthday!

I found a use for that giant block of ground beef in my freezer: sliders. Much like the cupcakes, there was no input concerning the menu for the Star Wars party. Whatever I felt like making... The first year I did this, I went crazy (exhibit A). The first year, everyone showed up early and ate very little. The next year, I was supposed to be photographing another party so the menu became pizza and chips (exhibit B). That year, guests showed up at least an hour early. This year was supposed to be different. This year I would cook, but I wouldn't spend all my time cooking. This year I would be ready for them when they showed up at noon instead of 1 'o-clock, like the invitation says. This year would be better.

Noon - The doorbell doesn't ring.

1:30 p.m. - The doorbell doesn't ring.

2:45 p.m. - I wonder if I should put my mango salsa back in the fridge. Oh, hark. The doorbell rings.

Mangoes

Scrappy wanted to help with cubing mangoes. Her way of helping is to eat every other slice and tell me how our cooking show is going. It was far more entertaining than cooking by myself and much more tame than the witches and uncontrollable dancing spells that were involved in baking cookies.

Although she helped make the rice, Scrappy was not involved in grilling the pork. I think she was also surprised by the addition of ginger and cinnamon to the mangoes she'd cut.

Fresh Figs

Last year, I didn't pay attention to what was growing the backyard. We received lots of tomatoes (all delicious) from our downstairs neighbor, but I didn't pay attention to anything else back there. Then I started working with models, and we had to wonder what was all over the ground. Last month, a model noticed the figs. She said we should be eating them. The next week, we received a platter of figs from our neighbor. The day after that, Martha Stewart cooked with the author of Platter of Figs. I couldn't cook with the figs I'd received, though. They turned moldy too quickly. The next time, I put them in the fridge immediately and prepared them for dinner that night. LV was not a fan--too mushy and the stems freaked him out. I would eat them again.

Yum Salad in a Bag

None of the salad at the store looked good, so I bought a bag of ready-to-serve "more creative" salad. "More creative" because it includes toasted almonds and dried cranberries and some vinaigrette. (LV has forgotten more things than most people will ever know, but he dug out the correct spelling of vinaigrette. That one "stood" in his brain.) I added the strawberries and turkey. Done.

I almost forgot! I made corn muffins to go with this. That made it see more filling.

Kind of Yum Salad and Corn Cake

I changed the header on this blog to say that I serve dinner with no complaints: I don't complain, my family doesn't complain. Two days later, I get complaints.

"Daddy... I don't want to eat the raspberries."

Scrappy was waiting for her instant corn cake to rise in the oven. We hadn't even sat down to eat. And she was already protesting... the raspberries?

The salad had started to turn. I was meticulously picking out good pieces from bad pieces in the spring mix, and she's protesting... raspberries.

This had to be because I changed the header.

Burgers and Blurberries

I didn't know what to server with the hamburgers I made, so I chopped up the cherry tomatoes and added blueberries. That went over well enough. We had plenty of popcorn and Twizzlers at the movies that afternoon, so there wasn't much need for anything extra with dinner.

Salad for Everyone

Why keep making the same salad by myself? This time LV and Scrappy pitched in, cutting strawberries and tomatoes (a new addition).