The grocery store had really big, fresh-looking cuts of salmon. I decided they would be good to grill up. The Foreman wasn't so cooperative, though. I think the cuts were too thick. And then the whole apartment reeked of fish. At least the salmon tasted good.
I wanted breaded chicken. Chicken Parm seemed like a good idea. It turned out well, I think.
While I didn't really feel like making dinner, I also didn't want to serve a completely plain frozen pizza. So, I tossed on the leftover meat sauce and served it with green peppers.
This was one of those days where I started pulling everything out of the fridge that needed to be used--spinach, apples, onions, pork--and started trying to mix it up in a way that would taste like I meant to put them all together. I used cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, and I don't remember what else. It had a sort of sweet and hot kick.
The meat sauce seemed to go over well last time (and it leaves plenty of leftovers for lunch), so I took the extra ground beef, browned it, and mixed it with a jar of sauce. Scrappy and LV got excited because it looks like Manwich, but it doesn't taste nearly the same. Sadly, for them.
There weren't enough buns leftover by the time I made burgers, so mine became a patty melt. This time I flattened it out a lot to be sure I wouldn't be eating mostly two pieces of toast. That seemed to work. Can you tell I hadn't met my quota of vegetables for the day before dinner?
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.
I don't make this nearly often enough. Every time I make it, it's totally worth the effort. This time, though, I pulled out pieces of chicken for Scrappy before I mixed up the sauce, remembering how much she tried to avoid eating it the last time.
Because we've decided that the bone-in baked pork chops are better, I bought more and baked them for an hour the same way--salt, pepper, chili powder. This time I served them with Brussels sprout and baked potatoes. (Pasta and rice just seem so boring these days.)
Now a regular part of the rotation, here is more fettuccine alfredo with grilled chicken and tomatoes. This was another installment in the adventures of figuring out how to expand the recipe from 8 ounces to 12 ounces (the full box so that there can be leftovers). I think this batch of sauce turned out a bit better than the first attempt to expand the recipe.
Earlier in the day, I made a batch of spring pea soup. (I think that was the name of of it...) With lemon juice and fresh mint, this was even better than the black bean soup.
I'd like to call this bolognese, but it's really just browned ground beef added to an existing jar of pasta sauce. It was tasty.
My plan had been to do a lot of cooking on one day so that my load of dishes would be lighter for the rest of the week. (I'm getting really tired of washing them by hand and have fallen away from my resolution to do the dishes every day.)
I made the chicken pot pie by itself, though--not as part of a great cooking marathon. I had thought there would be lots of leftovers, but it was really good so we ate quite a bit.
The idea of making sauce when I didn't need to struck me as a sensible idea. We had something else for dinner that night, but I only took pictures of the meat sauce.
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.))
The only pork at the supermarket was a giant family pack with bones. Nothing about the situation said "Foreman Grill" to me. So I went looking for a new recipe online. After seasoning these with salt, pepper, and chili powder, I popped the whole set (eight chops?) in the oven for an hour. We haven't had pork chops from the oven in what feels like years. They went over very well with LV.
I'm not sure I made here... It looks like I piled up steamed baby artichokes, grilled chicken, and shell pasta, then topped it all with alfredo sauce. I think that's what's going on here.
Scrappy really wanted to a way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We all decided cupcakes would be best. This amounted to LV and Scrappy heading out with shopping list that said, "X if it's on sale, or else y." Apparently nothing was on sale that weekend, so I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch. They weren't as soft as the boxed cake mixes and prepared frosting I turned into cupcakes in December, but I was still happy with how the first homemade batch turned out.
Yeah, pregnancy has not turned me off to eating meat. Here we are, three days later, and eating more ground beef. I like to say it's for the iron.
"I can't believe I made meatloaf in March."
"Why can't you believe that?"
"I don't remember it."
"Yeah, you made meatloaf. And it was really good," LV says. He hasn't even looked at the photo. "You left something out. Onions! You left out the onions and it was really good!"
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.)
Having fallen into a pretty bland routine, it seemed time to make the other prepared pork tenderloin. It was still too peppery, but I enjoyed it.
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.
A month ago, I bought all kinds of dried beans, but never really figured out what to do with them. Batches of red beans and chickpeas mostly went to waste, sitting too long in the fridge, waiting to be added to salads or other dishes.
Then I saw a recipe for black bean soup. I thought the idea sounded wonderful--despite having not really eaten any of the beans I'd already bought. The recipe was really exciting to me because all I needed was a regular pot and a blender. The end results were way better than the black soup I order from our local take-out.
Our bananas became ripe too quickly, so I stuck them in the refrigerator (having no idea this would stop the ripening process) and thought the only thing left to do with bananas that brown (on the outside) was to bake banana bread. Even though the bananas were not completely mushy, the bread turned out much better than the last round of nut bread I made.
LV wanted something with chocolate and nuts for around the house. I found Chocolate Revel Bars in the cookbook and decided that could work. The lumpy stuff on top is an oatmeal-based dough. Good stuff.
Then, because I hadn't baked enough that afternoon, I made chicken parmigiana. It was a welcome break from the usual grilled chicken.
I was so excited to turn the leftover loaf of white bread into French Toast. Instead of guessing what the egg mixture should be, I looked up the recipe. It sounded like too many eggs... I don't like to soak the bread, so I was left with the equivalent of three beaten eggs. I scrabbled them. Cinnamon and vanilla seasoned scrambled eggs are weird. And watery. Luckily, the toast was good.
Today I actually used my Cooking for Dummies book. The first time I've ever looked something up in it during the 8 years it's moved around the country with me. LV was completely taken by a commercial for Anytizers. The next time we were near a freezer section, I pointed them out to him. What do you serve with your Anytizers? I had brussels sprout in the fridge and no idea how to properly cook them. Dummies to the rescue...
Pasta was on a crazy sale, but most of the boxes seemed to be ziti. I've never used ziti for anything, so I was really excited to find a baked ziti recipe. Like lasagna, there seem to be an infinite number of ways to produce baked ziti. This is a combination of a Martha Stewart Everyday Food recipe (which was poor sauce over cooked ziti and bake) and a more labor-intensive recipe (combine seven pounds of fresh vegetables and Italian sausage to create your own sauce before baking). I was happy with the results. So were Scrappy and LV. But I was really happy. All that ziti fed my Italian food craving for a week.
There's chicken in there, but mostly there's a lot of fresh asparagus and cherry tomatoes tossed with penne and LV's new favorite cream sauce.
Ever since I had to make a big breakfast before a day of shooting last week, I've been on a kick with making eggs for breakfast. LV wanted to get in on that, so this is his pre-work breakfast.
Then we had more eggs for dinner. They were going to expire soon, we didn't have any rice, and I was tired of pasta. Hence, a gigantic omelet for the three of us. (Although really I shouldn't be eating omelets...)
This is the "What do I have in the house that I can turn into dinner" meal. A box of spaghetti, the last tomato, whatever vegetables were left in the freezer... Voila. Dinner.
Why make life difficult on myself? I've wanted to make chicken kiev again for a long time, but it's such a time consuming process. Pathmark had frozen chicken kiev. Mmm... Perfect.
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...
LV really wanted some cookies around the house. Scrappy has been sick, though, which limits when I can make cookies. (I don't want her help if she's coughing on them, but I also don't want to be obviously baking without her...) Thursday finally felt like a good day. Happy Abe Lincoln's birthday.
"What should I make for dinner...?"
"Fettuccine."
"As long as you don't call it 'fetachine.'"
This time I made the whole box of fettuccine, thinking that would leave LV with leftovers to take to work. But the increase in sauce didn't work out so well. I mean, you could say it was more satiny, like the cook book describes it, but I would call it runny. I think I used too much milk and too little cheese. LV appreciated it. And stuck to his end of the deal.
Cherry tomatoes, red onions, and enough steak to leave LV with lunch to take later in the week. This baked in the oven at a low temperature for an hour or two before hitting the grill.
The green peppers at the grocery store looked really good this week, so I bought a bunch. I'm sure there are more creative things that could be done with green peppers, but the little pre-cut pieces of steak looked good, hence stir-fry. Well, they looked good before this picture. Here they're kind of colorless and sad. Over yellow rice, though, it wasn't as bland as it looks.
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.)
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...
Avocados were on sale, so our Super Bowl Sunday started with guacamole. I think my avocados were too small. Or maybe I just added too much lime juice. Either way, I ate plenty of it.
Next up, figuring Scrappy wouldn't want to eat wings, I made bagel bites and pigs in a blanket (the last of the leftovers from her party).
Then I made potato skins. I think they were better than the last time I made them. That could be because there were so many fewer to deal with.
Last, but not least, I made wings. The bigger grocery store seems to have access to bigger chickens. You can't tell in this picture just how much bigger they were, but I only made half any many as I normally do because there was twice at much meat.
