Eating Dinner With My Family

I swear there is a burger conspiracy out there. Or maybe it is perpetuated by the ground beef people.  Eight buns in a pack and most families hover around the 4 mark.  Now we have to have burgers again right?!  I adore burgers but twice a week is bit much every time we have burgers.  (the boy's favorite food and what I craved when I was pregnant with him)  So I let my boy check out the to try file for burgers and he chose this Salmon (no surprise there) burger from Happy Valley Chow .  It was very good!!  (and it showed those ground beef conspiracy nuts what's what ;) My husband cooked again since I am still feeling a bit yucky, and he was really impressed how well they held together!  They the mayo was perfect and I totally loved it.  We all totally loved the burger.  (Even the girl)  I am keeping a short post; I'm turning in early.  I need to be rested and have my strength for tomorrow's Gator game.  We are ha...

My family has been grumbling that so many meals we absolutely adored are not made again, or worse, forgotten about. I had thought about doing throwback Thursday for a while now, but being miserably sick prompted me to finally have the boys pick an oldie but goodie. (With the caveat that it was easy for my poor sick self). My husband picked this baked orecchiette with pork sugo. I remember really liking it and it made a ton which will be breakfast and/or lunch for us so I can hopefully relax and get better. The good: it was as tasty as I remembered!  The pork was on sale so the huge (and I mean huge!)  pan of pasta cost about $10. Add a salad and you have 2 dinners for just over $10!  The ok: they didn't have orecchiette at the store (and being sick I wasn't making pasta!), so I opted for small shells. I think they got a bit overlooked and were too small for the sauce. I think farfalle would be a better substitution  I halved the original recipe (I'm giving you the po...

I really need to get through some of the pins I have on my "sweets" board. I don't bake much but everyone else in the house has a mega sweet tooth!  I do have two (ok 3) things that I do really enjoy in the sweets department. 1) Coconut!!! 2) Citrus (I <3 sour!) and if I'm totally honest cheesecake.  So, I picked this cookie to make in lieu of a new recipe tonight.  And since I'm not feeling up to snuff my, darling husband cooked these for me.  You know the drill with fellow bloggers, I give you the link to their site and a list of what you will need so you know what you are working with.  If I were going to make any notes for making this in the future, use salted butter in the crust!  I think it needed it, and so did my husband. Sunburst Lemon Bars Crust all-purpose flour powdered sugar butter grated lemon peel Filling eggs granulated sugar all-purpose flour baking powder fresh lemon juice grated lemon peel Glaze powdered sugar lemon juice Recip...

I really have to say I dug these sandwiches.  Yes, I am going to complain about some things, mainly so if you make these, you won't have reason to be annoyed with them, but this is an awesome take on a Bahn Mi type sandwich.  Now we adore bahn mi, so this was going to be a popular dish in the house, but because we are going to compare this to one of our all time favorite meals, there could be some disparaging comments.  There weren't! We all enjoyed it, a lot!  Ok on to the complaining! If you follow the cooking directions, you need to cook the chicken in one batch.  If you split it in to two batches, like I needed to because of the  size of my grill pan, you will have some burnt mayo in the bottom for your second batch.  It wasn't horrible, but it was a bit smelly and stuck to some of the second batch chicken.  Also, the shallots cooked way faster than the chicken and they were almost, and by almost I meant just over the line burnt!...

The boy and I really liked them.  My husband said they were good but not that great, but I think the fiasco he had cooking them on the grill colored his judgement.  You see, pesto is a good percentage of oil and when you put oil soaked burgers on a gas grill, the oil cooks out, and causes a big mess and a big fire!  So, he was a little annoyed with the burgers before he even tasted them.  He said I should warn any of you who might attempt the burgers (and I do recommend that you do:) most emphatically not to cook them on a grill but on the stove in a pan.  No, it wasn't a top 10 burger, but still good.  The boy ate 1 1/2 before we had finished our first, and that is saying something! Caprese Burgers   2 Cup basil leaves 1/4 Cup salted roasted almonds 1 garlic clove 1/2 Cup extra-virgin olive oil plus more for brushing 1/4 Cup grated Pecorino-Romano cheese Salt Freshly ground pepper 1 Lb ground beef chuck 1 Lb ground beef sirloin 8...

Well for no other reason, this dish is awesome because it is quick, easy and inexpensive. I chose it because feta was BOGO so I had an extra one. Even not counting feta as a free ingredient, it was totally economical. Now it isn't a wow or an omg, but still pretty tasty and a different twist on your typical spaghetti. The boys were hovering around a 3.5 , but I thought solid 4 and its my blog so 4 it is! ;)  I forgot to save the pasta water, but I don't think it needed it and I used all the parsley in the morning's juice so I didn't have that, but it was still a good dish.  The only thing I would recommend is to season well with salt.  I went light because I know how salty feta is, but upon tasting it, I think it needed a good bit more.  Start with a light salting of course and taste, but just keep in in mind.  If I made this again, I think I would like to roast my own peppers:).  Oh and btw, we are having a meatless Sunday, since tomorrow we are cooki...

My boy loves salmon!  He choose this recipe for dinner tonight and he loved it!  I am putting it in the fixable file. Why?  Well there was a ton of mustard to salmon ratio.  I think next time I would like whole grain mustard with the English powdered mustard I have. The recipe just says powered mustard, and perhaps the strong horseradish flavor in the English mustard coupled with the Dijon was what made it sinus cleaning!  :0. Once I scraped the mustard off the little girl's portion, she liked it. I ate my bites with the potatoes to help cut the mustard. (Giggle) The potatoes were another issue. I cooked them at least twice as long as recommended and they still were not done. I even bought the small "two bite" red potatoes and quartered those. Also, the crust didn't brown in the time allotted, so I turned on the broiler.  So, while not terrible, I think it could be fixed.  I liked this Salmon with Whole Grain Mustard much better.  The only t...