Eating Dinner With My Family

I had been wanting to try this dish for a while now.  I have seen it show up several times on various food articles I had been reading.  I think this particular recipe was off of pinterest.  It was quick and easy, and my only complaint, which we all shared, was there was too much sauce to egg.  I would add at least 2 more eggs to the amount of sauce.  We all had too much sauce to egg ratio and we didn't even use all the sauce.  I cooked the eggs at a little lower temperature and covered them to prevent spattering.  I also splurged and bought the Muir Glen tomatoes that rated the best taste from the Splendid Table and are BPA free!  They were worth it.  (for BPA free alone) I also thought they weren't too fiery so I added some hot sauce.  They yogurt was great in it and really made the dish.  Harissa is a Tuninsan hot sauce.  It really is unique and I suggest you don't substitute another hot sauce.  I can be made or bought...

My husband choose this throwback Thursday dish.  I followed the sauce recipe, but the meatballs I played around with a little bit.  Mostly, I just made my life easy by getting the meatloaf package of ground beef/pork rather than get a package of both meats and most likely have odd bits I didn't need for tonight's dinner.  As always, if you don't eat beef or pork, you can switch out the meat for other ones, but the beef & pork combo is traditional and I think the tastiest.  I totally am loving the greens in the meatballs.  I don't know where I first saw this idea (and it was most like spinach that was in the original recipe), but I have used collards and now bok choy with fantastic results.  (my next experiment will involve the leavings from my juicing, but that is for another time:)  I also love coating the meatballs in bread crumbs. This coating absorbs the juices (and fat) cooking out of the meatball and adds a lot of flavor and a nice crisp...

So, its meatless Monday again. I don't know if its the back to school blahs, coming off a cold, or just a plain ole funk, but trying to find a new recipe that I'm excited to try, and isn't too taxing for my tired and/or lazy self is pretty impossible.  It is a testament to my laziness that Im not looking on my computer and that I prefer browsing on the couch with my phone, my boards on Pinterest, in which I pin every thing from yum, to dear God I bet that is horrible but I can't resist pinning it because I have to know is it that bad?!  (Like the tater tot sliders I just pinned. I know. WTH was I thinking. I don't care for 1) tater tots 2) processed food & 3) a carb on carb sandwich. however I pinned it because, like a deep fried Twinkie, I'm intrigued.  But I ramble on. (Pause here and sing with me as drift off in to Led Zepplin:)  This was on my meatless board, I had most of the ingredients and it looked fast and easy.  I loved it. The boy seemed to like t...

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...

A plethora of lefotvers and my desire to play with the juicer prevented me from acutally cooking dinner tonight, so instead I share the juice we made today.  It was good, better than the veggie alternative to red bull I made previously!  I think I will try the "V8" recipe on the site I'm getting these recipes from next.  Based on the ingredients, I think I will like it even better. Better Than A Salad Cucumber - 1 cucumber (8-1/4") Lemon - 1 fruit (2-1/8" dia) Onion (spring/scallion) - 1 medium (4 1/8" long) Parsley - 1 handful Pepper (sweet red) - 1/2 medium (approx 2-3/4" long, 2-1/2 -dia.) Tomatoes - 3 small whole (2-2/5" dia) Process all ingredients in a juicer, shake or stir and serve.

I am going to have a hard time accurately judging this recipe.  The biggest impediment to impartiality is the fact that while the stew was cooking, one child was asleep and the other playing quietly, so I poured my self a glass of wine, read my book and reacquainted myself with the pleasure a piece of baguette and real butter can bring, so I wasn't exactly starving when the meal was finished. The other thing that may skew my perception, was that I tailored this to fit some ingredients I had on hand.  Those being acorn squash over the easier to peel butternut and the tiny, albeit delicious, but infinitely harder to chop yum yum peppers I had in my Front Porch Pickings basket.  My only valid complaint was that there wasn't much in the way of liquid and I thought the stew a bit too dry for me to think of it as a stew.  I also substituted flounder for the halibut as there wasn't any at my local publix.  Even with all that against it, I still tho...

I saw this on the allrecipes Roku channel.  I thought it looked like my kind of recipe and the chef on the video said that it was one of the best things he had, had in a long time.  Now, I have always thought of allrecipes as for your average cook.  I thought of it as a collection of recipes that either instructed one on how to make a basic dish or how to make that known dish a little different.  (like with this Benedict over a bread pudding.)  Since I love crab, hollandaise and eggs, I figured this would be a slam dunk.  That was not exactly the case.  While the finished product wasn't terrible, it wasn't a "jump up and down meal," and that was from my husband, the person who liked the dish best.  I thought it ok, but was really annoyed with the way the recipe was written.  I know how to make Hollandaise and poach eggs, but "Hollandaise" and "poached eggs" as ingredients is kind of BS.  I can only assume they thought I would b...

Let me start with it was a bit of work.  Mostly the work is getting corn off 10 cobs, and normally I would say if you want a short cut, try frozen, but the original recipe says that fresh is essential.  It was totally worth the work!  (click here for a fast way of getting all the silk off corn on the cob)  We all loved it.  I do have some recommendations if you make this.  First of all, the bacon topping was really enough for about half the soup because this makes quite a bit.  My husband shredded up some deli ham on his second bowl.  The chipotle powder only adds spice at the end of the bite, the soup doesn't taste very spicy, so I suggest you do what we did, and let everyone spice theirs up individually.  (my son turned his pink with sriracha!)  Also, have extra of the broth and half and half on hand.  It might just have been we had a fairly large potato that sucked up a lot of the liquid, or that it wasn't supposed to have much...

The boy and I liked this better than my husband.  It was tasty, but not stellar.  Actually I think we probably liked it the same but my son and I tend to err on the side positive when it comes to judgements.  The dressing was nice, and the meat was perfectly done.  It was super fast to cook and easy too.  For that, I can forgive its lack of perfection.  We didn't eat anything with it; we just dressed some extra lettuce with the dressing and called it a 'salad". Grilled Steak Kebab Pitas With Ginger & Garlic Dressing   1/2 Cup extra-virgin olive oil more for brushing 1 Tbs. finely grated ginger 1 Tbs. green Tabasco or other jalapeño hot sauce 2 Tsp cider vinegar 1 small to medium clove garlic finely grated or minced Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 lb. 1-inch-thick -boneless beef strip steaks, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes 6 to 8 bamboo skewers (at least 8 inches long), soaked in water for at least 20 minute...

I made this dish for me.  It if full of things that one or more of my family members don't care for.  However, I had the eggplant and the zucchini from my Front Porch Pickings basket and I had this in the to try file, and I really wanted to try it.  It was pretty easy to make.  The only things that may be difficult for one when making it really depends on the individual.  Are you uncomfortable with a knife?  Well there is a good bit of easy chopping.  The grill can also be a pain if you have charcoal, since that adds to the time involved.  (or if like us, the gas ran out half way through the cooking time:)  The good news, was it was wonderful!  Everyone liked it.  My son, who usually gags when eating eggplant loved it.  (he didn't realize that there was eggplant in it until near the end of the meal;)  It is a really nice, loaded with veggies, dish that pleased everyone.  I did alter the recipe only a tiny bit....

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...

My darling husband took me out to lunch the other day.  We went to a new resturant in town that had it's good points and bad.  It's biggest fault was that everything was overpriced for the quality.  Some parts of the dish would be good, but other aspects would take away from the good points.  That's a problem this price point.  Anyways, I digress.  One of the really good things was their Romesco sauce. (that were over unremarkable meatballs)  So I went and found several recipes for Romesco Sauce and dishes that have Romeso in it.  I chose this one first because it seemed the most basic and I had shrimp.  The sauce was OUTSTANDING! The shrimp with it was good too.  The flatbreads... well lets just say that they were less than sucessful.  I don't know if the yeast was dead, if I made the water a little too warm or what but the dough didn't rise at all. The resulting bread was edible but didn't do anything add to the dish.  Consid...