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.

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.

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.

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.

Steak Sandwiches

LV was hoping for French Dip sandwiches, but I didn't have any beef broth. Instead I had lots of spinach. I decided this would be better. With leftover macaroni and potato salads from when the family came to visit.

French Dip Sandwiches

If it didn't use so many dishes, I would probably make this all the time.

Chocolates and Salmon Burgers

After my success with free handing the butterfly wings for cupcakes in December, I started to think about making special "Yay, It's a Boy" candies. I was able to find some molds that could work and some colors I thought would be good. But I had no idea how long I would be hunched over, carefully filling the trays.

In addition to the large suckers, I made small bottles, letter blocks, cradles and other baby related shapes.

Then, for some bizarre reason, I decided I was still okay to keep hunching over to pick out the bones from canned salmon...

Salmon Burgers and Salad

The amount of enthusiasm Scrappy and LV show for eating these burgers makes up for the pain in the neck it is to pick out all the little bones. Mmm... Salmon burgers.

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.))

Frenh Dip Sandwiches

Earlier in the week, I grilled a steak before it turned bad. Then I had to figure out what to do with dried leftover steak. I decided to get a can of beef broth and make some sandwiches. They went over well. Even with Scrappy.

Spicy Pecan Pork Sandwiches

Because I still didn't feel like grilling, I went back to a recipe I tried once in 2007. Back then I didn't have the food processor. Now that it had made it's way onto the countertop, I had a much easier time creating the breading of toasted pecans. The most exciting part, though, was finally baking potatoes that looked and tasted right. (I always seem to undercook them.)

Burger Party

The grocery store wasn't selling ground beef in anything less than 4 lb. packages. Seriously. What am I gonna do with four pounds of ground beef? I made four little hamburgers for LV and me, and then froze the rest. Unfortunately, I didn't think until after it was over to separate all the leftover meat into smaller sections. I froze it as one big block. The burgers, however, we delicious.

Crepes and Sausage & Peppers

Requests aren't that common, but two came this week: pancakes and sausage & peppers. It just so happened both requests were met on the same day. This is not a pancake. It is a weak attempt at a crepe. Maybe next time I won't need the toothpick to keep it shut.

Considering I've never ever had sausage & peppers before and am totally unfamiliar with what they should be like, I thought this was an awesome attempt. Two minutes of surfing Google results for a general idea, and I was on my way with sautéeing and grilling.

White Chunk Alabcore Tuna Melt

A while back, tuna went on sale at our local grocery store. But all the cans said "albacore." Assuming it had to be some sort of tuna, we bought it. Then never ate it.

The other day, I finally used a can to make a tuna melt. I had a lot of onions to use up. So, it was really more of an onion melt. Which sounds really gross. It wasn't that gross. It was just a lot of onion. This is Day 2 of the onion and albacore melt.

French Dip Sandwiches

LV specifically requested that the leftover beef be turned into "those sandwiches you made last time." They were really good.

Hand-cut fries were also requested, but I rejected that idea. We had curly fries in the freezer.

Burgers + Leftover Pork

Lucky for LV there was huge pile of dishes to be washed when he got home from work. Otherwise he might have eaten one these burgers raw instead of waiting for it to cook slowly in the toaster oven.

LV made this the night before. He didn't want to keep battering and baking pork, so I found this recipe in the 20-minute section of the cookbook. It was similar to the pear + pork recipe, but with a different flavor of apples and thyme.

Crabcake Sandwiches

The good thing about freelancing is that I can surprise LV with homemade dinner. After hearing about his un-fun day at the office, I can be waiting with crabcakes. Yay for food...

French Dip Sandwiches

We had the leftovers the very next day. The steak was took small for the rolls at the grocery store, so I bought oven roasted turkey breast lunch meat to fill them out.

LV, who hates mushy foods, actually dipped his sandwich. The sauce was that good.

Pita Sandwiches

Anyone see a running theme yet? On this particular night, we came home to use up the pitas, baby arugula, and othe vegetables I had bought earlier in the week. Oh, yeah. And the turkey...

Grilled Cheese

I don't think I've given up cooking... I just have other things to focus on right now--like whether Ashley Tisdale's lyrics "You see my body, not who I am" make the kind of song I want Scrapy dancing around to. (I don't care if everyone else in 1st grade loves to dance and sing to "Sexyback," the song "He Said, She Said" is definitely not making it on the abridged version Headstrong.) But here we are with a grilled cheese sandwich as the only thing I've cooked in the past week. Wee...