7 posts tagged “recipes”

What food item would you miss the most if it were removed from your diet and recipes? 
Submitted by scorpion1116.  

That's easy - cheese.  Many of the dinners I make have at least a little bit of cheese in them, and so it would greatly impact my cooking if I had to stop using it!

This week so far, we've had pasta bake, a delicious vegetable soup that's blended and has sharp cheddar melted in, and tonight is leftover soup with baked potatoes (cheddar on top).  Tomorrow's meal won't have cheese: hot dogs/turkey sausage and cole slaw.  :)

We always divide up the cooking between all the couples in our family when it comes to Thanksgiving.  My dad gets the core things that have been cooked at their house, and the rest of us divide up the rest.

So this year, like the last few years, I'm making the following:

• Green Bean Casserole.  We are going to try something new with it this year, though, and hopefully it will be better.  We watched Good Eats: Bean Stalker where he made his own sauce instead of cream of mushroom soup, and that looked so much better.  So I'm combining the two recipes, where I'll use storebought fried onions (French's), but make the sauce from scratch.
• Corn Casserole.  E's mom usually makes this, and so we've been adding it each year too.
• Coconut Cream Pie.  This is my fav pie, besides pumpkin, so I like to add it to the pile of pies we have.  The betty crocker cookbook recipe.  I usually buy a premade crust, but this year, I'm going to try something different.  I saw the idea in my Real Simple this last time (recipe) where they took shortbread cookies and almonds and butter and made a crust that way.  It looks like shortbread cookies are really easy to make, so I'll do a batch of those, and then use some of them for the crust.  I'll bring the rest to snack on.

Some years, I've made my Pumpkin Bread, but Sarah's got that covered, and hers is really good.  I'll just bring cookies instead as a snacky thing.

I'll be doing the pie today, but the other two have to wait till tomorrow morning, which is slightly stress inducing because I worry doing things right at the last minute.  But these dishes are much better when they are fresh, so that's how it has to be.  E's going to help, though, it will be okay.

Thanksgiving dinner is always fabulous, I'm looking forward to it so much.  (So much that I went and had an open face turkey sandwich last night at Boppin' Bo's, I couldn't wait for Thursday to eat turkey!)  And it should be a good day with the family, too :)

I have a giant pile of cooking magazines, some not even opened. Trying to find some inspiration for this week's meal planning. I scavenged every pile of mags in the house looking for them. They are too nice of magazines to throw away!

Edited to add: these are all Reiman magazines: Cooking for 2 (my fav because it uses smaller portions without having to guess really how many servings to scale down to), Simple and Delicious (which used to be Quick Cooking, there are a bunch titled that in the pile too) and Taste of Home (which we don't currently get).  I didn't take the Real Simples out of the pile, even though those have recipes too.

I've got a pile of recent meal lists and shopping lists that I haven't written about, but the pile was so large that it was overwhelming me, so I'm just writing up the last two weeks :)

• Corn on the cob and veggie hot dogs/turkey sausage - roasted garlic butter for the corn
• Shells and Cheese (like theredkitchen: Macaroni and Cheese), dinner rolls (2nd try of allrecipes: Unbelievable Rolls, with cheese and leftover garlic butter), and butternut squash (from Farmer's Market)
• Crepes with cream filling (allrecipes: Creamy Strawberry Crepes), but with apples (allrecipes: Apple Cinnamon Syrup), with Hashbrowns on the George Foreman grill with some swiss melted on top.
• Uncle Randy Nachos (family favorite with a mix of hamburger and refried beans on top of corn chips with cheese and green onions (olives for E)
• Bow-tie pasta with Alfredo sauce, served with grilled chicken/grilled vegemeat and steamed broccoli - the alfredo sauce recipe was one Sarah had suggested (allrecipes: Chicken Fettuchini Alfredo), but modified a bit with the chicken done separately, so I started out with more garlic and no onion/mushrooms, and colby rather than colby jack.  DELICIOUS.
  
• Baked Potatoes with broccoli and carrot alfredo for E/cheese on mine, with an acorn squash
• Fajitas with grilled red peppers and onions, rice, beans for E and Chicken for me
• Baked Potato Soup (theredkitchen) with breadmaker bread

Definitely click through to some of the recipes if you are looking for inspiration.

We planned our meals last week around potatoes being on sale and the alfredo recipe  we knew would be more than we could eat one night (I ate it for lunches a few days too).

This coming week, I have another dentist appointment with multiple fillings, so I'm trying to paln some meals that are going to be soft for the few days after that :)

My favorite new trick for shopping and planning is to take a piece of printer paper and fold it in half.  On one side, I write my meal ideas, and on the other side, my grocery list.  The meal ideas are divided into boxes with the main dish and any side things that go along with it.  I try to write more ideas than I need and then E and I narrow it down, and then I have more for next week.  My grocery list is roughly written up like the order of the store, but that is easier said than done when filling it out. :)  In the middle of the page, I put my coupon envelope.  I've been trying to clip more coupons to save money, and the easiest way to keep track is to actually write the coupon list (with expiration) on the outside and then cross them off as I use them and it can be used as many weeks as I want.  Also, before I start writing my list, I evaluate what is most on sale that week at Safeway and try to plan meals around that.  Between that and the couples, it is a nice money-saving idea.  So this whole thing is working super!

• Pear Apple Omelets (allrecipes, added apples for some of the pears) with grilled hash browns on the grill.  Unique, but it got a little burnt on the bottom (my fault, not the recipe) so I'd be mre careful in the future.
  
• Mexican meal, including burritos with rice, fajita grilled veges (peppers, onions, bit of fresh garlic), grilled chicken for me/grilled fake chicken stripes for E, and homemade corn chips out of corn tortillas. Served with a pina colada like drink out of pina colada mix, pinnapple, and coconut milk
• Macaroni and Cheese (family fav on theredkitchen) with carrots (allrecipes, with lemon zest and plum jam instead)and rolls (allrecipes, added cheese). Gooey bars (allrecipes, modified for what I had on hand; less cream cheese, added sweetened condensed milk, added nuts and coconut, and less powdered sugar as suggested in the comments) for desert.  This meal took some coordinating, but it was sure good!
  
• Pita sandwiches. Muffuletta spread (previously tried from Simple and Delicious)and tofurky sausage for E, turkey sausage on mine.
• Big salads with lots of veges and meat, and pitas with cheese broiled on top
• Pasta salad (family fav on theredkitchen) with hawaiian cheesy bread (previously tried from Simple and Delicious) and raspberry smoothies (vanilla yogurt, raspberry/pineapple/orange sherbert, freshly frozen raspberries, and sprite).

For lunches, I've been eating fruits and veges or leftovers.  We did eat out a little more over the last week + because it was our anniversary and some other things went on.  We've got a nice stockpile of good leftovers because of making a bunch extra Pasta salad tonight, and one more big meal planned for this week.  Next week, or this weekend, I think we'll have a trip to Costco in store, and there is one meal in particular I like to have after that trip, and maybe I can find more good on-sale things and some new frozen fruit for smoothies too (besides the normal stuff we need to go for: laundry soap, TP, light bulbs, ya know)

I'm looking forward to continuing on with this (posts taggeed "meal planning"), it's really fun for me to look back at what I've made and share with my friends here :)

While my meal choices in the last few weeks haven't been quite as innovative as the last update, I've still been having fun with cooking.  This isn't in order, and I'm thinking I'm missing a few things.  We definitely have been eating in more than out.

• Big giant salad with veges and chicken for me and Hawaiian rolls on the side.
  
• Hamburgers (Griller for E) on the grill with basil garlic fries alongside.  I just posted the modified fries recipe on TRK :)
• Stir-fry with peppers, carrots, snow-peas, and broccoli, tofu marinated in teriyaki sauce, and pineapple, all on rice.  I added a bit of chicken marinated in teriyaki to mine.
• Spaghetti and broccoli, with meat sauce and mizithra for me and olive sauce for E. 
  
• Homemade Pizza on the pizza stone.
• Waffles on the grill (from the george foreman cookbook) with an apple sauce (from allrecipes) on top (yes, for dinner)
  
• something-like-lasagna for me, with ravioli for E.  I didn't have lasagna noodles so I tried with macaroni and the leftover meat sauce and a bit of white sauce with nutmeg and multiple cheeses.
• Fried Chicken soup (family favorite, on theredkitchen) with a baguette

I've had a couple of good lunches - the previously-photographed chicken salad sandwich, and a lot of veges and fruit meals including a day where I lightly grilled a small zucchini and multiple meals with cantaloupe (the ones with stripes are NOT as good as the regular ones, IMO)

My sweet treat on the "baking" front for last week was poop-drop cookies.  I say "baking" because they are actually no-bake cookies.  I like them a lot, E's always more for Chocolate chip cookies, but periodically, I have to make these.  Leonard and Sarah both lucked out at visiting around the day I made them and got to steal a few; this is a family favorite!  We also did a few smoothies throughout the other meals, our new-ish blender is super duper for smoothies.  And then we've tried grilling pears a few times now too - with brown sugar and seasonings in the core area and a jam glaze on top.  I need to write that one up still, but I keep improvising and not measuring!

When we have gone out recently it's been for good healthy food (Subway and Sweet Tomatoes).  Although every meal we've cooked hasn't been the ideal perfect health food, we are trying much harder, and that's going to really be good in the end, I do believe.

I'm working on my grocery for tonight now, so it was a nice chance to look back at the recent meals to see what we've had that's been good and try to think of more new ideas along with normal things.  I'd really like grilled polenta again like we had the first week we had our grill, that was really good.  We'll see how my list goes!

One thing I've been researching lately is the idea of getting a George Foreman grill.  I've personally been thinking about how nice it would be to make my own grilled chicken on top of a salad, or a chicken salad sandwich without using those little cans.  And then when we were at the beach, I used a griddle for making french toast, and that was so nice that I wouldn't mind having that option.  The G5 with 5 interchangable plates is looking awful good so that it could do more than just the normal grill does.  Then it would do waffles, too, and even though we have a waffle maker, this might be nicer and it's only one appliance to move around.

Since E's a vegetarian and I'm not, I can think of way  more things that *I* could use this for than him, but I've seen recipes for paninis and quesadillas that had me thinking.  He thinks he could grill vege-meat, too, so that might make for some nice ideas.  I'd also love to try grilling vegetables, like zucchini and peppers and stuff like that.

I'm trying to feel more health conscious, and so I think this might help give me better options for lunches than just a cheese sandwich and chips every day (okay, it's not every day, but I'm just not making the most varied choices at this time!)

Do any of you have a george foreman grill?  What do you use it for most?

Note to self: a couple of lists of recipes I found on about.com: indoorgrills indoorgrills2

Listening to: Gavin DeGraw's I Don't Wanna Be, Nickleback's Next Contestant, Anna Nalick's Wreck of the Day, K's Choice's Virgin State of Mind