Chicken Legs

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.

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.

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.

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.

Steak and Potatoes

I had been meaning to make this chunk of steak for quite some time. It came out of the freezer on maybe Monday or even Sunday, but didn't go into the oven until today. We didn't get sick. Success!

Pork Shoulder

The clock is ticking very loudly the whole time you're cooking with an infant. Do I have time to go look up that recipe for the rub? No. I should have written it down last time. Do I have time to look at a recipe at all? Probably not. Baby isn't really about to give me the time to even lay the ingredients out on the counter. He began wailing as soon as I picked up the first garlic clove. Going from memory and without measuring utensils, I think this turned out well.

Spice Rubbed Turkey with Cranberry BBQ Sauce

Years ago, way back at the start of this blog, I flagged recipes in the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook that looked good. I never actually thought I'd make spice rubbed turkey breast, but I also never bothered to remove the flag. Then Key Foods put a 6.5 lb turkey breast on sale.

The cranberry bbq sauce was really good. I mean, the turkey turned out well, but... that cranberry sauce was super tasty. Scrappy wasn't a fan. Things like cider vinegar and hot sauce boiled with cranberry isn't really her thing. Oh well.

Roast Chicken, Muffins, Mini Quiche

My parents came to visit. I made a chicken.

I also made mini quiche (much better when I didn't haphazardly add salt) and...

muffins for Sunday morning. (I was up *real* early on Saturday.) The muffins are oatmeal-cranberry-pecan. Because that's what was around...

The 501st!

No, it's not Star Wars. It's pernil. I thought I would take a picture before it became completely blackened.

A gigantic pork shoulder with the skin on does not look that appetizing. But give it enough time and it's delish! ("Enough time" for this particular shoulder was about 12 hours at 250 degrees.)

Pork Roast

I had made my first pot roast, so now it was time to embrace the pork roast. This time I included the potatoes in the dish while it baked. So good.

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.

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.

Something Different with the Pork

I bought a bag of onions a while ago. On this day I remembered to use them. I didn't have much time, though, so, in order to pair them with the grilled pork, I put the onions and some other tasty stuff in a frying pan. When LV saw the pork go into the frying pan, he became enthusiastic about dinner. "I like what I'm seeing!"

Oven Fried Chicken

Not only have I decided I have the hang of making large amounts of chicken, but I've also decided baked potatoes are a great side dish. Why keep choosing between pasta and rice?

Grilled Pork

More spinach! It was a really big bag... And a baked potato. How different.

Burgers!

Something fresh and tasty... with some tator-tots from the freezer...

Breakfast for Dinner

When we went grocery shopping that afternoon, the idea of breakfast sandwiches for dinner struck me as a great idea. Two bites into my sandwich, I didn't think they were such a great idea anymore. Two or three years ago, my dentist pushed me into getting an inlay to replace a porcelain filling. The dentist before him had said I should get a silver filling--porcelain doesn't last, she said. But I grew up with my mom always showing me how horrible her mouth looked with so many silver fillings. Being vain, I chose porcelain, which, like the first dentist warned, didn't last. The second dentist swore inlay was better. Being uninformed, I went with the inlay. (Though, seeing as my insurance didn't want to cover it, I should have asked more questions.) Two bites into my sandwich, I heard a horrible crunch. What I thought was a white fleck of fat actually turned out to be a chunk of bone. Sweet. That inlay was no match for it.

Burgers

For the Fourth of July, we like to watch the hot dog eating contest on ESPN and eat hot dogs for lunch. (I don't really understand how it's possible considering that we're watching people dunk hot dogs in water and swallow them whole. It's really gross.) Then I grill up hamburgers later in the day. Those are tater tots on my salad.

This year I didn't want to go stand around, waiting for the fireworks (that whole 7 months pregnant thing...), so I told Scrappy to hunt down all the fireworks scenes she could find in her collection of movies. We watched those while we waited for the live fireworks on TV.

Fish Sticks

I found the lemon-garlic fish sticks in the freezer that I bought a few months back. When I opened the package, I thought they looked really gross. But I tried to make it work. It all tasted better than it looks.