Steak

We bought one humongous steak while grocery shopping, and LV said, "What will you guys eat?" This isn't really how the steak was divided, but pretty much...

Crazy Timing

Saturday used to always be movie night. But that was when we used to always eat chicken nuggets, Chinese takeout, or spaghetti. Then we started eating vegetables and some people started to take an hour to finish dinner. Movie night went away.

Last week we bought more popcorn and I was sure we were going to have a movie night again. But we got home from the grocery store and never thought about watching a movie together.

This Saturday we planned. Movie at 5, dinner after, then the usual bedtime routine. In order to really make this possible, I started dinner at like 3:30 in the afternoon. Somehow prepping all the vegetables and grilling chicken and boiling pasta took until almost 5. The pasta salad went into the refrigerator just before the movie, I popped the popcorn, we watched the movie, we ate dinner, Scrappy didn't fuss over the vegetables, and it was a happy Saturday night. Crazy.

Grilled Pork and Baked Potatoes

As bored as I was with pork, I was even more bored with teriyaki marinates. I flipped through BH&G cookbook for more ideas. I came up with a chipotle marinate that I had to drastically alter seeing as I had no chipotle spices. It was like ground cumin + brown sugar + white wine vinegar + some other stuff. It was actually good.

The real hit were the potatoes that took an insanely long time to bake considering how small they are. That's olive oil giving them the crazy hue. A week later, Scrappy and LV were still raving about the potatoes.

Steak and Eggplant

I wasn't sure what to make for dinner. I had little red potatoes and an eggplant sitting in the fridge. I didn't feel like reading how to prepare eggplant, so I thought we would eat the steak with potatoes. Then I thought if I ate any more potatoes (there were a lot of mashed sweet potatoes leftover), I might vomit. But when I went to get the package of chicken out of the fridge, it turned out to be pork. No! No more pork.

I grilled the steak and fried the eggplant. It was all very I-don't-care-I-just-want-to-eat kind of cooking. I ate lots of eggplant and LV ate lots of steak.

Pork Tenderloin

LV really wanted pork tenderloin for dinner. We made a family trip to the bigger grocery store that normally carries it. That grocery store was not carrying LV's pork tenderloin that day.

We bought some other brand in a hickory flavor. Yeah, more pork. It's not like we bought pork futures. We just keep making it for dinner...

The best part (for me) was not the pork. (Shocking.) It was the homemade mashed sweet potatoes. (Yeah, more yams.) I've never boiled then mashed any form of potatoes in my life. I usually make the instant potatoes. This was awesome. I thought they were the greatest thing ever. Scrappy did not. She still thinks only Rainbow Sherbet should have the texture of Rainbow Sherbet. (It was about that temperature by the time she finished her dinner.)

I left the asparagus steaming for way too long. Way too long.

Chicken Pizza

I concluded that chicken pizza is not as filling as pork pizza because the same effort is not required to chew chicken.

Doesn't that sound tempting.

Teriyaki Grilled Pork

As though I haven't had enough leftover pork for lunch, I grilled some more pork for dinner. Yes! More pork marinated in soy sauce with brown sugar and lemon juice and whatever else goes into that mix. I never ever thought I would finish a bottle of soy sauce in my life.

Blueberry Muffins, Grilled Chicken, and Green Beans

This is one of those dinners that Scrappy can always finish--plain chicken with BBQ sauce for dipping, blueberry muffins, and a vegetable she's eaten before. Well, once she figures out that they are not raisin muffins, then she can finish it.

I completely forgot about adding oatmeal to the mix and had no idea that one carton of blueberries wouldn't be nearly enough for the recipe. LV said the muffins reminded him of the scene from Casino where Robert De Niro flips because the berries are not evenly distributed. Not that any of us were angered by the lack of balance in the distribution of the berries. Just saying...

Grilled Chicken

I didn't know what to with the chicken, so I just pulled out a bunch of spices and hoped it would taste good. The usual Buffalo chicken spices--paprika, chili powder, and something else that color. It was okay. The rice wasn't quite done.

Happiest Puppies Decorates the Table

The flowers didn't get worked very well into the previous night's dinner, so here are the flowers that completely brightened up our dining room.

(This is so not a shameless ploy to hit my 200th post.)

Grilled Pork and Goodies

I got a little distracted making dinner and forgot that I wasn't going to prepare everything in the fruit and vegetable drawers. Whoops. We had teriyaki (I think) grilled pork wit grape tomatoes, blue berries, cucumbers and white peaches on a bed of fried yams. Oh. And look at that. There's rice under there too.

Strawberries! Part 2

Way back, I made a salad that Scrappy called "yum salad." I couldn't remember where the recipe came from and, frankly, didn't feel like shredding two cups of chicken. I made this up as I went along.

There weren't nearly enough greens compared to the amount of strawberries and chicken in the salad. One bag of baby arugula and one cucumber plus one quart of strawberries and one pound of chicken with some walnuts toasted in nutmeg and cloves. Salt, pepper, olive oil, and the bowl was waiting for LV when he came home. I like to think all the strawberries are good for his cold...

Strawberries! Part 1

The problem with buying a quart of strawberries at the local grocery store is that not could there be one heinously mushy and moldy berry hidden in the center of the package, but also that you have to use them all almost immediately so that they don't become heinously mushy and moldy.

We had already finished the chocolate chip muffins, so I made strawberry muffins. Then I finished off four of them. Almost immediately.

Steak and Yam Fries

Looks a bit more like Halloween than St. Patrick's day. We weren't going to festive extremes this year. In fact, I had to use a flash because I just didn't feel like getting up to find better light. Those were my festive extremes...

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Muffins

It was a Saturday morning wake and bake. With muffins, though.

I was so excited to find I could make muffins with the one egg left in our fridge. Only the one egg that was left was stuff to the carton. My mom taught me to check the eggs I buy... I guess I should have been more neurotic? I gave the new dozen a quick glance before getting in line and racing back to my bowl of dry ingredients.

Teriyaki Grilled Chicken

I didn't feel like going to the store to get Italian dressing or something to marinate the chicken, so I broke out the old Better Homes & Gardens cookbook to see what grill recipes they had.

soy sauce + lemon juice + garlic + brown sugar = tasty marinade

thinly sliced chicken breast + Foreman Grill = dry chicken (despite 6 hours of marinating)

Big Crabcakes

We bought crab for Tuesday, knowing that Scrappy is a fan. But I wasn't a fan of that last crab dish I made. I went to the web see what else I could make and came up with lots of recipes for crab cakes. The Self recipe for crabcake sandwiches sounded really good.

Just as I was adding the last ingredients, I thought to myself, Why did I follow the directions and keep the chunks as large as possible... These are going to completely fall apart. But they didn't. The healthy recipe, in all its wisdom, called for lots of mayonnaise and eggs. Mmm sticky.

Happiest Puppies Gets a Foreman Grill!

Kohl's put them on sale. It was time to got get the Lean Mean Grilling Machine...

Normally this would have been some sort of stir-fry situation with the ingredients pictured above, but we got to grill it instead. Wee. The next day I made grilled cheese with it. Not quite the same. I guess I prefer my grilled cheese fried and not grilled.

Pork Pizza

The other day I made all that pork to be sure it wouldn't go bad. Then I didn't know what to do with it. Neither of us really felt like eating a normal dinner that would take more than 20 minutes total to prepare, so, when I suggested to LV that we just put the pork on a frozen cheese pizza, he didn't object. "Filling" was the best word to describe dinner that night.

Fun with Prepared Foods

I've had Oreos that were frosted on the wrong side, but I don't think I'd ever looked for the reversed stamp in the frosting before...

The options were meatballs or pork, and LV chose meatballs. I had to make the pork anyway so it didn't go bad. I just didn't take a picture of it yet. (Broiled, maple pepper, etc. You've seen it here before.)

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.

Yellow Rice, Chicken & Green Beans

We probably don't have this nearly enough for how enthusiastic LV was about the dish the first time we made it.

It's Disgusting to Listen to

For lunch, we made macaroni & cheese with tuna. Then LV threw some of the bacon leftover from breakfast on top. It suddenly became the most disgusting thing to hear anyone eat. The super crunchy bacon, the squishy macaroni. It's surprising no one vomited on the table or ran screaming from the room.

Above Photo: My least favorite part shot by LV. Below: LV's least favorite part shot by me.

Burger

I had decided to make patty melts Thursday night, but didn't take a picture b/c "patty melt for one" was kind of sad. So, Friday morning, LV had a burger for breakfast. This is Saturday's burger for lunch. I had mine on a tortilla. I didn't feel like taking a picture of mine.

Chicken Sautee with (Garlic and) Green Olive Topping

After the chicken enchiladas were rejected in 2005, I tried pulling a recipe from Epicurious. Now, if I hadn't had a leftover bottle of green olives from a recent attempt to shoot a proper martini, I probably never would have looked at this recipe. It was 2005. Ground Cumin was not in my cabinet. "I hate ground cumin" was the review of the dish, so I never made it again. Until now.

I'm not even sure how I made this dish back then. I never bough fresh parsley. I don't feel like there was fresh garlic on hand. And there was definitely no food processor. While last time might have just been old chopped green olives, this time I went slightly crazy with the garlic. I just kept tossing more and more into the food processor, forgetting that this wasn't a roast or something--it was all going to end up on top of the chicken.

Overall, though, it was better than the first attempt. Scrappy, meanwhile, had plain chicken with BBQ sauce.

Rejected Recipe Finally Gets Made

In 2005, I pulled a recipe for chicken enchiladas and corn salsa from Woman's Day when my roommate and I were going to stop ordering so much takeout. The recipe was rejected.

In 2006, I pulled the recipe again for LV when he was looking for something simple. It was rejected again.

This week, in an attempt to plan more, I pulled out the two copies of the recipe and decided to try it. Slicing up the avocado is the longest part of the recipe. Super easy... (Not that I'm calling LV a pansy. But it is really easy.)

"I don't know how well that's going to go over," LV said, looking at the enchiladas and referring to Scrappy's tendency to reject any meat that is not a solid shape. "The corn, though, she'll dig."

Twenty minutes later, looking at Scrappy's plate, LV had to retract his prediction. All the corn was still there. Scrappy was not swayed to eat avocados because they had been her grandfather's favorite things to eat. Meanwhile, the enchiladas were almost gone because, due to certain the resident Puerto Ricans' distaste for spicy sauces, they were covered in BBQ sauce.

"Would you eat Brussels sprout if I covered it in BBQ sauce?" LV asked.

"No," Scrappy said. "I would know [it was still Brussels sprout]."

More Scones

I wanted to make muffins or some sort of bread for breakfast, but I wasn't sure what. We didn't have a lot in the cabinets to add to any muffins. Then I saw the Better Homes & Gardens recipe for scones. It seemed easier that the previous recipe. Unfortunately, it was also super sticky, so I just dropped them into lumps on the baking sheets. I suppose that's not really unfortunate at all. I mean, they tasted just as good and look fine here. Yeah, nothing really unfortunate here...

Apples, Cinnamon, and Patience

I woke up and wanted pancakes. Our stove is kind of lame and doesn't allow for much control over the heat. So, I've always hated making pancakes on that stove. You have to be really patient and just them sit there for a very long time. Normal pancakes shouldn't take that long. These had to really be worth the wait.

First I added cinnamon to the batter. Then I remembered we had a bag of apples leftover from my last shoot. (Fancy catering...) Voila. Ici les cinnamon apples pancakes.

Why stop with the apples there? For dinner, we had pork with apples and tangerines. I actually let that simmer long enough, too, so it tasted better than on previous attempts.

Layers and Layers...

It's a good thing that this lasagna was so much better than last year's lasagna because we had a lot leftover. I ate lasagna for lunch every day, then we had some for dinner, then I ate some more for lunch. There is still one more serving in the fridge...

Lasagna No. 2

So, more than a year after my first attempt ("Bluebrry Buckle (and lasagna)"), I decided to finally give lasagna another try. This time, I used the recipe right off the box while keeping in mind the advice from the Addiverse (a place I don't visit often enough).

While this second attempt stacked up to be overflowing in the baking dish and weigh about 10 pounds, it just became a big puddle on the plate.

Scrappy looked at it like we were serving slime for dinner. She cut the tiniest piece of noodle ever and somehow managed to swallow it.

I had already met my quota for nonsense much earlier in the day, so I might have lacked a little patience when explaining that lasagna is like every other Italian food she's ever had--pasta with spaghetti sauce. Eat it.

Somewhat surprisingly, it was only the green beans she tried to throw out at the end of dinner.

Valentine's Day

In the spirit of less-meticulous planning, I went shopping at the last minute for Valentine's dinner. LV's favorite foods are the Hormel pork tenderloin, asparagus, crème brulée and some other things that didn't go with those first three. In my search for the pork tenderloin, I found some other goodies that seemed like they would be easier to prepare than last year's menu.

There as the mushroom/tomato/cheese plate...

Bread...

Wine...

Lobster bisque (a frozen pack that just needed to heat up during our cocktail hour)...

The pork tenderloin and steamed asparagus...

(Which deserves lots of space because it was really good.)

And, finally, the crème brulée (a Better Homes & Gardens recipe--who knew?)

Pork and Rotini

As opposed to a year ago, when I would meticulously plan dinner and shop for all sorts of specific ingredients, we now buy pork, chicken and beef every week and then just figure out what to do with it later. This is the week's pork with what was left of a box of pasta.

Steak with Green Sauce

The food processor comes in a blue box that features a picture of the food processor filled with neatly stacked slices of green, yellow and red peppers. I think this is just a suggestion for how to put food into the processor. But the instructions imply that I can feed vegetables through the opening and the blades will slice my vegetables to look like the picture. Above is a picture of my vegetables... I served them over the rice and steak we had for dinner.

I've had a lot of Domino's lately...

You should check out the other blog to see what's keeping me away from the stove. Click Here

(I'd say "keeping me out of the kitchen," but that's where Hair and Makeup tend to set up and where I put my feeble catering attempts.)

Scones!

This recipe for cinnamon scones from an old issue of Food & Wine has been stuck to my refrigerator for months. I finally decided to make it this morning. It also gave me an excuse to finally get out the food processor.

I didn't read the directions carefully enough, so mine don't look like the three pictured in the issue, but they were pretty tasty for a first. (If a little bland and undercooked.)

This is leftover spaghetti from the night before. I thought it looked like an absurd amount of food, but was told that it is a small dish and "Don't treat me like a freak." The motion blur was approved, though. ;0)