My New Favorite

I made this for a Friday night dinner and it was awesome!  Not surprisingly, the recipe was from America's Test Kitchen.

Pork chops breaded with panko and shredded parmesan cheese.  To die for...and certainly something I'd serve again.  Since we're trying to eat light (ish) I served them with roasted butternut squash and an arugula salad.  Delish!

Chicken Tortellini Soup

My first from-scratch soup made without a recipe!  Ta-Da!

First, I boiled a whole chicken.  Yep....just threw it in a pot with some onion, carrots and celery and filled it up past the chicken.  Oh, and I added plenty of salt, a small handful.  I'm usually guilty of not seasoning enough.  I boiled that chicken for about 45 minutes, then took it out and carved it.  And by carved, I mean pulled the meat off barbarically.  :)  I threw it back in the pot with some sauteed peppers and onions and cooked tortellini.  Lastly, I tossed in fresh baby spinach leaves.  Voila!  Lunch, with a ton of leftovers.  The only thing that I thought that it could use was some mushrooms.

Can't wait to make some homemade soup again.  This weather certainly calls for it.

First.

First nice dinner of 2016:  poached salmon with a dijon and herb vinaigrette, roast potatoes and fresh green beans.  Happy New Year to All!

Cake for Two

Watching Food Network shows can be dangerous.  For instance, if you are watching Cutthroat Kitchen you will often find that you have a hankering for whatever the challenge food they are making.  Most of the time it's something that you don't have the ingredients or desire to make right then.

Until that night two weeks ago.

We were watching Cutthroat, and the last challenge is almost always a dessert challenge.  The contestants were making spice cake.  One of them was coming up short on time due to his sabotages, and tossed his cake into the microwave.  You'd think that it wouldn't come out well, right?  Wrong.  It ended up being a great cake and he won.  Brian eyed the cake warily and said, "I'll bet that I could do that."

Five minutes looking for a recipe and 30 minutes after that:  chocolate cake (with frosting!) from our microwave.  The recipe called for making them in a coffee mug.  Lots of flavor, not rubbery at all.

After eating, we decided that this recipe is dangerous to know about.  So we've agreed to never make it again.  :)

Playing Catch-Up

Well.

Life has a way of running away with you sometimes, especially around the holidays.  So normally I would have written a post about each of these things individually.  Instead, here's a group post.  These are all things that we've eaten in the last couple of weeks that I thought were noteworthy...

 Spinach frittata.  Something that I had never had before, and it was awesome.  I'm not sure what the difference is between this and crustless quiche, if there is a difference at all.  Leftovers were delicious for a couple of mornings after we had this for dinner.  

 This is called "Cowboy Caviar."  I made it from a recipe online for the resident holiday party last week.  The recipe calls for corn, black beans, black-eyed peas, cilantro, green onion, tomato and avocado.  They didn't have black-eyed peas at the grocery store so I subbed pinto beans.  This was great with tostitos scoops.

We were going to have friends over for a football game one Sunday but they had to cancel last minute.  So we ate the food anyway (of course!)  Mushroom swiss burgers were incredible, and this warm potato salad was simply divine.  It's a stretch calling it a "salad" instead of roast potatoes but you know what?  The name doesn't matter, it was so good.

Meatless Mondays

We're trying to embrace Meatless Mondays in our house again....one night a week we eat a vegetarian dinner.

The past two weeks have been quite good:

 First, a pasta with butternut squash, feta cheese and pecans.  Awesome, and I ate the leftovers for days!

The the other night was Wild Mushroom Farfalle, out of the October issue of Cooking Light.  I liked this too, with the spoonful of ricotta cheese on top that you stir into your plate.  The only thing I missed was something with a little crunch.  Like maybe toasted walnuts.  Just to give it a little texture.  (When I read that I feel like a Food Network judge on a cooking show, by the way.)

Also, I'd like to add that while we (meaning we the parents) are trying to adopt a meatless meal once a week, the kids have no problem doing it more often.  Meaning:  neither kid would touch this.  Still doesn't stop us from trying, though.

Gettin' Fancy

Last week's dinner menu was more written for the adults than for the kids.  And it's good to do that sometimes.

Two meals stood out:

The chicken and polenta dish looked good enough to offer at a restaurant!  It was delicious to boot....I used to dislike polenta. But now that I know that there's other ways to have it other than a sliced tube at the grocery store, I'm more likely to eat it.  "Tube-y" polenta tastes firm and weird.  This stuff reminded me of mashed potatoes.

And this right here?  Seared scallops over lemony zucchini risotto.  I know, really fancied for a Tuesday night!  Best scallops I've had in a long time.  And this risotto rules, too.  I ate the leftover risotto for breakfast the next two days, with a fried egg on top.  Awesome.