Yucky

Luis really wanted pasteles. This was his request for dinner. Sure. After two years of seeing the Goya frozen pasteles at the grocery store and saying, "No, no. Let's not get them," he requests them after they've disappeared from the store.

No more heat-and-serve pasteles, but they and prepared frozen discos. I thought that I was making pasteles off the recipe in the back. Did I mention I was completely cracked out from a stressful day? I ended up with really nasty empanadas. Doughy shells, corned beef stuffing... They were gross. But there were 10 of them for the two of us. So, I ate empanadas for lunch the next day. And the day after that. The taste did not improve.

Tasty

There was this episode of Family Matters where Laura decides she can make breakfast in half the time if she just cooks everything at twice the temperature. Then Urkle has to rush over and put out the blaze she's started in the kitchen. I didn't set the kitchen on fire, but the episode came to mind when I decided to just guess that increasing the temperature would be a good way to get the London broil cooked in half the time.

If you've followed the posts here, you've seen the charred thing that comes out of the oven after 6 (or more) hours at 225 degrees. At 4 'o-clock, I put this in the oven at 325 degrees, hoping it would be ready by 7:30 (or whenever LV got home). LV always proclaims that charred lump tastes good, but this time it really did. Maybe it was the smaller baking dish. Maybe it was the decrease in time. Maybe it was a thicker, fattier cut. Whatever it was. It as soooo much better this time.

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.

Boring. It's what's for dinner.

Grilled chicken, frozen green beans, and some pasta. Yawn...

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.

Grilled Chicken with Made Up Merinade

I didn't feel like having the normal grilled chicken. (read: plain) So I mixed up brown sugar, soy sauce and lemon juice. It didn't have any time to marinate, but it still seemed to soak in just fine while grilling. Maybe because I kept adding more every minute...

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).

Steak and a Dozen Eggs

LV tells me all the eggs are going to expired. "All the eggs" being a full dozen we hadn't used. What could I make with a dozen eggs... I could more than double the recipe I have for crème brulée and scramble all the egg whites? That's A LOT of scrambled eggs. I figured if the crème brulée shelf life was eight hours, then I could eat the scrambled eggs for breakfast. (I put it on a sandwich. It was... different. And maybe too many onions for the morning.)

Sausage and Peppers

I liked the sausage and peppers when we had it on sandwiches, but in order to make that I actually have to remember to go to the store and get the hero rolls. I didn't plan ahead. We sausage and peppers over rice. It was fine.

Bland

Personally, I can't believe I made dinner today. I'll attribute its super-boring contents to needing to offset my super-exciting day. And that it's all we had in the fridge: chicken, tortillas, and ears of corn.

Salad

With all the takeout and meat-centric meals lately, I made salad. It looks like normal salad, but really it's Yum Salad buried under all the cucumbers that were on sale. Yum.

Burgers and Power Outtages

I made burgers on the Foreman grill. I tried to toast the buns in the toaster oven. I blew the fuse. Luckily with all the shooting I've been doing lately, it's no problem for me to find the fuse box and reset it.

Pork Roast

We bought this giant slab of pork at the grocery store kind of as a joke. I think it weighed three pounds. When we going to need three pounds of pork? But I put in the oven at a super low temperature for about six hours, and all three pounds were eaten. Not in one sitting.

Yum Salad Revisited

It's the now infamous combination of ready-made grilled chicken, strawberries, blueberries, spring greens, walnuts and so on. This time there's some nectarines for kicks.

Blueberries and Grilled Chicken

We had a lot of blueberries in the refrigerator that needed to be eaten. I poured them over the top of boring grilled chicken and green beans. Voila. Exciting.

Hamburgers

I didn't feel like waiting for the Fourth of July to make hamburgers. We celebrated early with avocados, cherry tomatoes and corn on the cob.

If you're thinking I skipped a few days here, check out the other blog.

Strawberry Muffins and Grilled Chicken

LV likes to remind us that he ate rice every day growing up, but I feel like I ate pasta every other day growing up (and almost every day in 2003 after my mom bought me enough boxes to fill a large suitcase). So I made muffins with all the strawberries we had in the fridge. Everyone wins.

Crab Pasta Salad

I get a lot of hits from people looking for crab salad on Google. Here you go, people. Scrappy loves her crab, and you all love your crab salad searches... (This looks amazing as a thumbnail. Use at about 75 pixels wide.)

Mush Revisited

There was plenty of mushiness leftover from the night before to be it's own sort of weird stew. I don't know it looks any more appetizing, but LV said I had to take a picture of my lunch.

Mush Over Rice

I wanted to use up the vegetables (zucchini, asparagus, cherry tomatoes, onions...) the night before in a big omelet or something, but we only had five eggs. So, this night I threw all the vegetables in a pot to simmer in beef broth. I knew the asparagus might turn icky, but I didn't really care; enough salt and pepper can help you forget the texture of stringy vegetables falling apart. That and a love of rainbow sherbet. After being warned that there wouldn't be time for Baskin Robbins if Scrappy spent two hours making faces at the mush, she ate everything green on her plate.

Breakfast for Dinner

Unsure of what to do for dinner and lacking the desire to go to the supermarket, we made breakfast for dinner. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, and turkey ham. I should have waited until we added syrup to take the photo--that always looks better.

It's Too Hot Out...

So, I was out peddling my portfolio, which meant left LV alone to get dinner started. About 5 p.m. I received a voicemail hoping that I was close by so I could work my magic to make the salad tasty. Luckily, I was about two stops away.

Rewind - Chicken Fingers and Veggies

We still had lots of Ritz crackers and the grocery store still had cherry tomatoes and cucumbers on sale, so we had chicken fingers with veggies again. LV was not about to complain.

Charred Red Meat

The day after I made a giant slab of steak charred the way LV likes, Glamour or Good Housekeeping showed up in the mail to remind me that red meat and blackening food lead to cancer. Mmm...

Grilled Pork with Peaches and Black Berries

Black berries and peaches were on sale this week and the pork was about to expire, hence, grilled pork covered in peaches, black berries and honey. Although, we bought the honey a really long time ago, so it was mostly a solid brick. I ended up sprinkling maple pepper all over for flavor. LV said it was good. I was more excited about all the leftover fruit.

Burger Party

So, as not to steal all the thunder from the new blog when it (finally) goes up, I'll just say, Look! I actually remembered to bring a camera with me to document the burger party so that LV has art for his new blog (when it finally goes up). :0)

Ambient light provided by the sun setting over the park.

Chicken Fingers and Veggies

I wanted to start taking pictures from one new uniform angle for all my posts (the extreme close up is getting old to me), but the chicken just didn't look as a good as it tasted in the overhead shots. The secret to this batch being so tasty was that for the first time ever there was more batter than chicken. And then I kicked some serious butt in Jeopardy with far more correct answers than bad guesses.

Birthday Weekend!

For about five years my birthday has fallen on Memorial Day weekend--the first big drinking Thursday of the summer, the first Summer Friday, the Saturday before Memorial Day,... Thanks to Leap Year, my birthday skipped over Memorial Day this year. However, thanks to LV, a giant bottle of TGI Friday's Pina Colada mix and the NBA playoffs, the phrase "It's your birthday weekend" still applied this year.

Frozen pizzas are boring, but cheap. And fast. So, seeing as this was Tuesday of just-another-week, we got Scrappy after school, at frozen pizza, played some SingStar, opened a present or two, and had some cake before her bedtime. It was kind of like my 11th birthday instead of my 28th. (Funny, I could only round up 11 candles to put on my cake...)

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.

Shrinky Dink

It's not quite Memorial Day, but I decided to grill up hamburgers. I tried to flatten them out so that they would be as wide as the buns, but they still shrank. This is the shrinking in action...

BBQ Grilled Pork Enchiladas

The pork was going to expire, so I grilled it on Monday night, but then we ordered pizza or something. Wednesday night I was ready to make a dinner with it. Rather than experiment with shredding (that took forever the two times we tried last summer), I just chopped it up and threw it into the tortillas with cheese and BBQ sauce. Mine had taco sauce, but LV's not a really a fan of spicy, hence BBQ.

More Beefy Goodness

I've heard too much red meat is bad for your heart, but here is some more steak. Yay Foreman Grill.

This isn't such a great photo, but it's the start of the overhead shots.

Coming Soon...

Burger Heaven is not so heavenly, but it is supposed to be the first post of Burger Club NYC. I thought the Breakfast Burger was going to be the first post, but that didn't set it off. Soon... http://burgerclubnyc.blogspot.com/

Leftover Salad

To use up the rest of the fruit salad (and because I didn't feel like making anything else), we had the leftover Yum Salad with the leftover fruit salad on top. Exciting.

Yum Salad, Biscuits and Lime Jell-O

I didn't really follow the recipe for the original yum salad, but it was basically the same (and a good way to use up all the fruit LV didn't put into Sunday's fruit salad).

This time I made biscuits to go with the salad.

And afterward, LV finally got to have his Lime Jell-O. (The box sat in our cabinet for like a month.)

More Mushrooms

There's grilled pork buried under all the sautéed mushrooms and onions. Maple pepper seasoning for something different.

Mother's Day

LV made breakfast (you can see his handiwork on his blog when it's updated), but I made dinner.

I've not only been slow to update this site, but also been on a bit of a break in the kitchen...

Tacos

For some reason it seemed to me that tacos would be a good way to quickly feed LV and use up the mushrooms... He doesn't like mushrooms, but luckily he does like pre-cooked chicken in prepared taco shells. Mmm.

Marinated Grilled Pork

Although pork is no longer Scrappy's hands down favorite, we were back to grilled pork with a made up marinade. It wasn't really teriyaki, it wasn't quite the cumin recipe Better Homes & Gardens called for... But it was good.

What is Steak?

Another night of phoning it in, this is flank steak with A-1 on the Foreman grill... The most important thing about dinnertime starting this week was Jeopardy.