Eating Dinner With My Family

I am being overwhelmed, again, with a bulging pantry and refrigerator.  I have decided to have my own personal version of Chopped and just dive in with a hodgepodge of ingredients and pray for the best.  I figured I would make this salad (as I am really into grilled romaine right now) and throw together something from stuff lying around for an entree.  The salad was amazing.  I think the best grilled romaine salad so far.  My husband and son agree.  What made this one better?  Well the dressing was awesome.  A great dressing to have around period.  I also liked that the salad included a 'garnish' of cool uncooked romaine chopped finely over the top.  Really the whole thing was perfection.  Just a note on the side, my chopped dish, Cornbread Dressing with Sausage and Collard Greens was a super smash too!  I am so happy and proud, but since I know tomorrow's dish may be a dismal failure, I am separating the posts into two....

I first saw this on "The Best Thing I Ever Ate".  Aaron Sanchez picked his mother's Arroz Con Crema.  I thought it looked amazing.  Now, I got this off the website for his mother's restaurant, but I am sure mine didn't hold a candle to hers.  This was very tasty.  My son declared this worthy of his favorite file!  My husband isn't home yet, so I can't give you his feed back, but it is a win with us.  I am excited to have it as leftovers.  I know it sounds strange, waiting for leftovers, but tomorrow morning, this with a runny egg yolk just might be heaven.  I only planned on serving this with a salad since it is meatless Monday, but with an egg it would have protein and still be meat free.  Next time:) Arroz Con Crema 4 c  water 2 c  Uncle Ben’s or other converted rice 1 T  butter 2 t  salt For the sour cream mixture 2 c  sour cream 1/2 c  chopped onion 1/4 c  chopped cilantro 1  ...

Part three of my ode to my friend dinner.  The corn muffins.  I love this one because I dislike sweet corn bread.  I agree whole heartily in this with the blogger I got this recipe from.  The muffins were really great.  I was concerned that the amount of pickles jalapenos was too small, but I didn't mess with the recipe.  I'm glad I didn't.  While these muffins weren't really spicy, there were spicy bites here and there which was nice.  I am not a baker and because of this I had all kinds of issues with the process.  (that is totally on me not the recipe;)  After removing them from the oven to add the cheese I forgot to mix in, and my uncanny ability to spew flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and anything else in powder form around my kitchen until every surface it got a thin coating, the muffins baked nicely and were very tasty!  This makes a lot of muffins.  I hope they keep because if they don't I am wasting a lot of...

This one is for you, A.  I had gotten some collard greens from my Front Porch Pickings basket.  The timing couldn't have been better.  I chose to use them as tonight's recipe because they were adored by a friend that has left us.  I have never cooked, nor even eaten, collards before. (not that my friend didn't always try)  I wanted to do them right and southern so she would have approved.  So when I think southern, I think Paula Deen.  (Doubly perfect because of a practical joke she played on her husband involving taping pictures of Ms. Paula Deen were they would surprise him.  It was very funny!)  I have to say that they were very tasty but unbelievably salty!  I used smoked turkey leg as my meat, but I think the culprit was the 2 TABLESPOONS of salt mixture that this recipe called for. It may have been that the large "bunch" should have been bigger than I had, but they fit just right in the water which leads me to believe that I ...

I am cheating again.  I made 3 recipes tonight, but am posting one per day. (I have good reasons this time not just lazy or allowing my family a repeat)  The menu tonight consisted of Sticky Garlic Chicken Skewers, Collard Greens and Spicy Cheddar, Bacon & Jalapeno Double Corn Muffins .  It wasn't intentional, but making the collard greens today seems oddly fitting.  A very dear friend of mine passed away and she loved southern food and collards in particular.  She also baked corn bread.  Her funeral is tomorrow, but it is too far away for me to attend.  When I realized I was making a dish that was totally her, it was bitter sweet.  We had cooked together often when we were in the same town, and I kind of  felt her there with me tonight.  Including our customary cooking snafu. (I left the cheese out of the batter and actually had the muffins in the oven before I noticed!) I don't want the post to be all emotional....

If you read the post about the shrimp on flat bread with Romesco sauce, you know that I had a dish I liked and wanted to recreate and improve upon.  I am feeling like the flu is having its way with me.  It involves aches, exhaustion and the occasional coughing bout.  My darling husband offered to wing a meatball recipe and I made the sauce.  Like a real life version of chopped, he had a refrigerator of ingredients to use and he made a really fine meatball out of them.  The Romesco sauce was a "smoked" version that went on a tuna steak.  I thought it would be a nice take on it.  I didn't think much could live up to the sauce we made for the shrimp, but I wanted tomato too as it was needing to be a runnier sauce to go over the meatballs.  Turns out that all the smoked almonds were eaten so I used plain salted.  I am interested to try the smoked version, but his sauce was pretty kick a$$ if I do say so myself.  The meatballs were amazi...

I had most of the ingredient for this on hand and they needed to be used.  While I picked if for convenience, it turned out to be quite a good recipe.  My husband loved it, including the guacamole!  He is not a fan of avocados or guac.  My son loved it, but declined on the guacamole.  He tasted it but didn't like it.  I too enjoyed this one.  I would have liked a bit more goat cheese but other than that I can't complain.  My husband came up with the brilliant idea to spread the goat cheese over the tortilla rather than get messy trying to crumble.  I like that the cheese was in every bite and less mess to boot.  Quesadillas are fast and easy to make and this one was not your typical cheese or chicken one. The beans can be made ahead too.  The recipe said you could assemble them early too.  I would worry what that would do the tortilla.  Sounds like a recipe for soggy to me, and quite frankly the spreading of cheese and bea...