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.

Leftover Ham

When the opportunity arises, LV likes to order a dish from Italian restaurants that has ham and a cream sauce. He asked me to hold the peas. Luckily, there were no peas in this frozen vegetable mix. He also requested a really thick sauce. I added corn starch, thinking that would do the trick. Instead we ended up with a lumpy alfredo sauce. Oh well. He still enjoyed it.

A Whole Chicken

I see whole chickens in the store or on some cooking segment and think I'd never make that. But then I finally bought one. I made a whole chicken.

Tacos

I had second half of a pack of ground beef in the freezer. None of the usual options sounded appetizing to me, so I decided to make tacos. That's imitation shredded cheese. It was fine in the tacos, but, when there aren't so many other foods going into your mouth at the same time, the "cheese" sticks to your teeth. Eek.

Grilled Pork and Yellow Rice

I didn't feel like baking the pork chops, so I seasoned them with the usual chili powder and grilled them instead. No complaints...

Oatmeal Scotchies

With our cookie container empty, it was time to make more...

Buttermilk Pancakes

When Imagine That! was about to hit theaters, LV received a press package of ketchup, mustard, chocolate syrup, and pancake mix. We shrugged our shoulders (until we saw the movie), put the items in the cabinet, and never really considered using them. But for weeks now I've been looking in the cabinet for things to make. Finally, one morning I woke up and started making pancakes with the mix. And what a nice mix it was!

Swedish Meatballs

I've made Swedish meatballs from scratch before, but we picked up a bag of frozen meatballs and a jar of lingon berries the last time we were at IKEA. One day I sent LV to work with a tub of meatballs. And only meatballs. This night I actually made a sauce and egg noodles to with frozen meatballs. Much better. (Though, I think I still prefer the homemade variety.)

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.

Bean and Pumpkin Soup

I bought a bag of beans almost a year ago that was labeled as a soup mix, but I never made it. (After preparing kidney beans and chickpeas that I didn't eat, I just left all the bags of beans to sit on the cabinet shelf.) Then I saw a recipe in November for black bean soup that used canned pumpkin. It sounded really good. I've made black bean soup before. I've made pea soup before. Why couldn't I use my random can of pumpkin (seriously, I'm not sure when or why this small can was purchased) and my bag of mixed beans? I had a cold, I needed something soupy. While it tasted good, this was not the cure for a sore throat. The finished product was like a bean chili. I keep asking LV if he wants some. He keeps saying no.

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.

Salad

Bags of lettuce were on sale, but there's no way we only ate vegetables for dinner. I have no recollection of what I served with this...

Ham and Eggs

What better dinner to make with your leftover ham than breakfast?

Bacon Wrapped New Year

When we invited LV's family to come over for brunch the day after Christmas, I thought I would make mini quiches and a ham and I don't know what else. They declined the offer, but I still wanted to try making mini quiches. So I made them on New Year's Eve (and added way too much salt). Luckily, one of the recipes I found online said that they freeze really well. The three of us weren't about to eat two dozen of these before midnight.

Mini quiches seemed appropriate because I wanted to try wrapping bacon around anything, and bacon and eggs go well together, right? So, I just had to decide what I was going to wrap the bacon around (after I found which store had bacon on sale). Apples became my answer. (Again, I have a lot of time to ponder life's mysteries...) Apples are cheap and they would give it that sweet-salty combo. And if that didn't work well enough, then there would always be mozzarella sticks... wrapped in bacon.

The heartburn was pretty extraordinary. But bacon wrapped goodies are still tasty the next day during your Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon.

Chicken Dinner

The last of the gigantic chicken cutlets. This time with asparagus and really good homemade biscuits. (I thought the biscuits were going to be burnt because I waited too long to get back to the oven to pull them out. Nope. Turns out I probably never cooked them long enough before.)

Oven Fried Chicken

This is my second attempt at a mega family pack of drumstick and thighs. The breading was really blah. I should go back to crackers with seasoning I add instead of boxed up seasoned bread crumbs.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

Taking a rest from the adventurous side of the kitchen...

Christmas

I've seen that commercial for Pillsbury cinnamon rolls a million times. When I saw they were two for $5, I had to get them. I think I was the only one who was excited, though.

Last night I made the crust. Even though I've seen on a dozen TV shows that you should use something to weigh down the crust, I skipped that step. And didn't bake the crust long enough. And so even though I thought the quiche was delicious (I had been up since 6 (there's more of that broccoli from last night, too)), Scrappy had a hard time cutting it.

Having conquered first big cuts of beef and then big cuts of chicken, I felt ready to move on to a new challenge. Giant cuts of ham were on sale for the holiday, so we bought a shank portion the size of my head. I scored it, made a glaze, and overall was pretty happy with my first attempt at a ham. I think we'll still be eating it in February.

Christmas Eve

We had a lot to do on Christmas Eve. I'm kind of surprised there were so many stores open... The main goal for me was to get two batches of chocolate cookies made for part of a gift set. LV was able to pick up a cookie dough scooper for me the day before. I *love* the scooper. Love it.

Scrappy would be with her mom on Christmas, so we tried to make a bigger deal about Christmas Eve dinner than we have in the past. This is another gigantic chicken cutlet with broccoli and homemade biscuits.

Then Scrappy and LV made sugar cookies using the Jiffy mix. LV and I had the same thought when we first tasted the finished product: This tasted like a corn muffin... I guess now we know that the fastest sugar cookies are definitely not the best sugar cookies.

And then we waited for Santa.

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.

Pot Roast

Thinking my parents were coming to visit for Christmas, I bought this pot roast. Then my mom announced they would not make it. So I baked up the meat before it could go bad.

The Dubbies

LV started a little magazine, Art Department Weekly, which he affectionately calls "A-D-Dubs." As part of a year-end special, he wanted to hand out awards--the Dubbies. His fellow Art Departmenteers thought they would be receiving actual trophies. This pressured him into thinking he needed something real to give them--not just a copy of the issue with their names printed in it. So he asked me to make star-shaped cookies. He had also expressed disappointment in there potentially being no gingerbread cookies this year (I think the recipe is a bit labor-intensive). But here we are: dozens of star-shaped gingerbread cookies for the Art Department. (There are a bunch more gingy children and bears off camera. This recipe produces a lot of dough when you roll it out right...)

Grilled Pork

The usual grilled pork with pasta and frozen vegetables... I didn't mean to shoot it like this, but I think it adds some flare to the meal.

Fajitas

Looking in the fridge and cabinets, I didn't have a whole lot to work with. A couple green peppers and a few tortillas. So, the baby and I set out to get some fajita seasoning. The cashier looked at me like I was kind of crazy. "This is it?" Yeah, that's dinner. With a lot of cookies after.

Chocolate Cake Cookie Bites

After we ran out of brownies, I wanted more. In my head, though, I was picturing something more like chocolate wafers--thin and crispy. Way back in 2007, Scrappy and I tried to make Oreos. I thought I would take that recipe (box of cake mix minus essential liquids), make better cookies, and then maybe make a peanut butter frosting. I ended up with a crying baby and my hands coated in super-sticky dough.

Rather than fight to roll out 100 tiny balls of dough (I don't remember it being such a pain the last time), I tried first dropping the dough in rounded teaspoons (but it stuck to the spoon) and then using a cookie press (but it wouldn't break away and the baby started crying again, so I just made one long ribbon on a cookie sheet to deal with later).

They ended up being really tasty.

Chicken Pot Pie

In my head, the leftover chicken (that gigantic cutlet) was set to become chicken pot pie. I just wasn't sure how I was going to make the crust with so little butter and shortening left. There were still more cookies to make... Besides that, I never find the Better Homes & Gardens recipe to be all that filling. With all kinds of time on my hands to ponder life's mysteries (I can't say feeding and playing with a newborn requires as much brain power as it does hands), I had plenty of opportunity to decide how to make the most of this pot pie.

This is the new and improved chicken pot pie, which now included four potatoes and a biscuit crust.

Class Party

I said LV was going to make the brownies for Scrappy's class, but I ended up making them. With two boxes, I thought we'd have so many more leftover. There were only a few. I guess I cut them too generously. ("Neurotically" might be a better word to describe my attempt at perfect symmetry.)

Leftover Shredded Pork

I like when LV asks if there's anything I need him to pick up on his way home. Today I needed tortillas; I had an idea for that leftover shredded pork.

There was a box of frozen chopped spinach in the freezer (again, from early in the pregnancy when I wanted to have lots of this kind of stuff on hand) which I thought could make for a good filing. "Good" in the way that it's not beans and we didn't have any rice. Then I made a sauce. Something like "ketchup + ground cumin + something runny + something else that's tasty." And when LV got home, I wrapped up the pork in flour tortillas and toasted it in the oven. They were okay.

Green Squash!

I know you're supposed to buy in-season locally-grown fruits and vegetables, but I was excited to see something in the produce section that didn't look so yucky. I don't know where it came from or how big a carbon footprint it cost, but that green squash was tasty.

Chicken Cutlets

In the meat department at the new grocery store, I spotted this bulging square shape labeled "chicken cutlets." It weighed four pounds and was priced at four dollars. LV asked, "What is that?" I didn't know, but looked really fresh.

Turns out, the butcher sliced the meat off a pterodactyl's chest and squeezed it into this little Styrofoam tray. I took one (the size a whole chicken) and put it in a casserole dish. I took the other and clipped it in half, putting both pieces in the freezer. Then I looked up a few recipes for baking a turkey and similar creatures in order to figure out how best to prepare this massive piece of chicken.

I ended up seasoning the chicken, covering the dish with foil, baking it according to turkey temperatures, and basting it every 30 minutes. Then I let it sit under the foil to continue cooking internally (I do tend to have a problem with undercooked chicken when it's not super-thin cut).

Dinner was a hunk of chicken on a plate with some of the juices. (I forget what bland treat I paired it with--the main event was the chicken.) LV thought it was the best thing ever.

Shredded Pork

Continuing in my adventures with "family size" packs of meat, I cooked up this giant hunk of pork for a long time at a low temperature. It ended up looking so small... I decided that if I shredded it, it would mean more bites and seem more filling. Mmm self-deception.

Cupcake Party

I feel like I ate LV's birthday cake all by myself, so I made a motion to make cupcakes for the "let's cut a cake for Scrappy" non-party birthday celebration. I added food coloring to the tub of vanilla frosting and told LV, "You know everyone is going to ask what flavor the purple are." He shook his head. Then Scrappy saw the tray and told her dad I made strawberry cupcakes. He laughed.

Now What

If Tuesday was the bottom of the barrel, I don't know what today was. I had some ground beef, I had the sour cream left from the coffee cake recipe, and that was about it. So, in a skillet, I combined ground beef, sour cream, ketchup, and some other stuff (the ketchup was a last minute addition when I realized I had no other tomato products and that Scrappy would probably want more flavor than the paprika, salt, pepper, etc.). Only my serving was plated with hot sauce and more sour cream. I also ate later so they could make whatever comments they wanted without me around. (Not that the apartment is so large I couldn't hear them if they had...)

The Bottom of the Barrel

I actually got to eat this meal while it was hot... Looking around the cabinets, I found a can of yams I didn't use last Thanksgiving. That seemed good enough; grilled chicken and stove top yams. Done.

Lentil Burger

There's nothing quite like pairing bad-for-you-white bread with a helping of I-think-this-is-good-for-me lentils. LV would never eat this. I made it for lunch.

Birthday Cake

We bought a bunch of cake mixes. The first set--yellow cake with vanilla frosting--was for LV's birthday. I tried to even out the cake to look less homemade by shaving off the top where it bubbles up like a big mushroom, but homemade looks homemade.

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!"

Burgers!

Again, the lack of interest in publishing this photo is rather apparent in a the lack of focus... However, I do take my burgers seriously.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Crunchy peanut butter is what I always say we should buy. But at the beginning of November, I bought the twin pack of creamy. I knew I was going to make peanut butter cookies. When I asked LV which were better--the soft peanut butter cookie base or the crunchier chocolate base (from last year)--he said they couldn't be compared. I think I liked the chocolate base's texture more, but mmm... Peanut butter.

Fettuccine

I haven't made one LV's favorite dishes in a while. This wasn't such a spectacular-looking rendition, but, using the leftover battered chicken, it tasted really good. I totally forgot to add the cheese to the sauce (I'm still learning to cook while distracted by conversations with one child and crying from another), so I just through it into the pot at the end. I'm not sure it made much of a difference considering my alfredo sauce is never satiny like the cook book says it should be.