Salads and Stir Fries Make Up for the Fish Fry, Right?

Nibbles

Or so goes my thinking when I look back at the last week’s meal plan!

Creating the week’s menu is a three step process these days:

  • Check my “saved for later” tab on Feedly for anything I’ve flagged food-wise over the last 2 weeks
  • Look through my Freezer Meal spreadsheet to check quantities and last-eaten dates
  • Check the weekly flyer for the supermarket for what’s on sale.

It was that last step that got me kind of excited about this week’s menu as a whole. Excited to spend a good long while in a hot kitchen, frying things in the middle of the week. Go figure.

But look at this dinner, wouldn’t you go to the effort?

Fried Catfish, Hush Puppies, and Cheese Grits

And the rest of the week was pretty tasty, too, come to that!

Home-cooked meals for the week of 5/16-5/22

Monday: Spinach-Artichoke Quesadillas + Saffron Rice with Peas
We really do love appetizers for dinner so I’d flagged a list of quesadilla variations and this one, from The Whole Bite, was the winner for the week. I used sundried tomato wraps instead of plain (I’ve had them in the freezer for a while, and you can even find them in gluten free varieties in some stores) and it was a really filling meal. I suppose I could have skipped the rice, but it just didn’t feel right to only eat a quesadilla for dinner. These also held very well for lunches later in the week.

Tuesday: Seeded Chicken Salad + Mixed Greens + Garlic Rolls
Hey, one of my own recipes! The salad is made in the usual way and I made a quick dressing of olive oil, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and dill for the greens. The garlic rolls were regular rolls, drizzled with garlic oil before being popped in the oven. The oil drips down to the bottom of the pan and, as the rolls bake, they soak up all that lovely garlic flavor. Mmmmm….

Wednesday: Fried Catfish + Cheese Grits + Hush Puppies
You can check out the full play-by-play of the making of Wednesday’s dinner in this week’s View from the Countertop video, but it started with the ad in the weekly flyer and turned out so good it was well worth frying something in the middle of the week. I may have already said that, but you have to understand just how much I dislike frying things in order to know how good this fried catfish was that I consider the grease particles in the air and the house smelling of fried food worth it. It was that good. And if you need a good source for coarse stone-ground grits, check out BradleysCountryStore.com. They’re local but they ship. Get some sausage while you’re at it.

Thursday: Chicken Tortilla Soup
This freezer meal recipe came from Loving My Nest and was surprisingly fabulous. I mean, it’s hard to screw up tortilla soup but it can be done. And since this was the first time actually cooking this freezer meal, it’s always a mystery how it will turn out. Definitely looking forward to the next time we make this and we will be making another batch for the freezer.

Friday: Cumin-Coriander Pork Chops + Baked Sweet Potatoes + Green Beans
Just what it says on the label. Bone-in pork chops seasoned with salt, pepper, cumin, coriander, and some garlic oil. Fabulous combination, you should try it some time!

Saturday: Beef & Vegetable Stir Fry + Brown Rice
Not quite sure which site I got this freezer meal recipe from, but it’s fairly basic: vegetables, sauce, and meat with a bit of the sauce added as a marinade. Now, the one thing I’ve noticed is that while the quantity of vegetables seems fine at first, once they’ve been frozen and cooked they shrink. A lot. So the first time I made this I had half a head of cabbage on hand so I diced it up and threw it in. This time I bought a bag of shredded cabbage expressly for the purpose and added some frozen peas in for good measure. So whatever recipes you find for a freezer meal stir fry, chances are good you’re going to want to double the vegetables. Trust me on this one.

Sundays: Leftovers
Since our Bark Busters appointment was scheduled for 5:30, we decided to play dinner by ear. We’re quite a few days ahead on lunches (cooking every night plus skipping the prepared meals on the weekends, this tends to happen from time to time) so it was easiest just to grab one of those to save time. We both opted for the catfish leftovers and they were just lovely.

I’ll go into how the Bark Busters session went in another post, but things are changing around here for Duncan… I hope we all survive his puppyhood!

Thank Heavens for Freezer Meals

Nibbles

Between the changes at work and our new family of three, last week was one of those that I could have easily bailed on cooking any given night and not felt very guilty at all. The fact that I only skipped one planned meal in favor of take-out is a small victory.

Home-cooked meals from May 2-8, 2016

Home-cooked meals from May 2-8, 2016

Check out the video right here: https://youtu.be/aNylk87DuQ0

Monday: Sweet Potato Cake Turkey Burgers + Side Salad + Grapes
Super simple freezer meal number one–this one didn’t even need defrosting! I believe the patty recipe came from Multiply Delicious and I just subbed turkey for chicken as the former is way easier to find and frequently on sale. I also doubled the recipe to make 12 patties or 3 meals at a time. We’ll definitely be making another batch because they are just so simple to have on hand and very tasty.

Tuesday: Chicken Curry with Cabbage and Peppers + Basmati Rice
Never a bad time for a good curry, this was our first try of the recipe from Loving My Nest and I think it’s a keeper. A freezer meal, yes, but I didn’t bother with the crock pot and it was the right call–the chicken may have become mealy if it cooked all day. Now, I believe I added a can of coconut milk to the mix before I froze it and, yes, it “broke” a bit (separated) when I cooked it. Would I do it again? Maybe, maybe not. I was just trying to avoid planning this meal and forgetting to have a can of coconut milk on hand and while it affected the appearance slightly, the taste didn’t suffer one bit. And, yes, I’d definitely use coconut milk over cows milk for this curry and pretty much any curry.

Wednesday: Cod Creole + Parmesan Orzo + Green Beans
What is it with me and forgetting to actually buy the fish I put on the menu?! I stuck it out this time, though, and it was definitely worth it. Cod is not only a very milk white fish it also doesn’t tend to fish-up the house when cooked. And this preparation from Hello Spoonful is just so simple it’s hard to beat! The one brand of gluten-free orzo we can find is a love-hate thing for us. We love orzo and have many dishes that call for it, but the gluten-free version puts out so much starch while boiling that it really does resemble risotto by the end more so than plain pasta. Straining it is a joke, so I usually don’t even bother, just mixing it into whatever else I had in mind and going with the flow.

Thursday: Broiled Steak + Mexican Street Corn Salad
Mmmm, Cinco de Mayo–as if we needed an excuse to have Mexican food for dinner, but I’m happy to take it anyway. The meal was mostly about the salad, which I found over on Live Eat Learn. I could have eaten a large bowl of this salad and skipped the steak and not been deprived whatsoever–I can totally see us making it again. We did a few substitutions, though. Normally I’d swap hominy for beans in most recipes, but since we were already focusing on the corn, I opted for some zucchini and yellow squash that needed to be used from the crisper. Also, while I adore feta and cotija cheese, we had a sizeable block of white cheddar leftover from my party and I shredded that up into the salad instead. I also cooked most of the ingredients for a bit to soften the squash and peppers up. I’m sure there are endless variations one could make on this salad and not go wrong–some halved cherry tomatoes come to mind, and maybe some avocado chunks, too?

Friday: Take out!
I debated making breakfast for dinner, but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead I picked up fried chicken and fixings and enjoyed the hell out of it!

Saturday: Sweet Potato Carbonara with Spinach and Eggplant
Since Todd isn’t a mushroom fan and they’re pretty High-FODMAP to boot, I substituted eggplant for the mushrooms in this recipe from Eating Well. Even though my sweet potato “noodles” didn’t hold their shape, this was a very filling, very tasty dish overall and I would encourage you to try it, even if yours ends up a bit more like a sweet potato vegetable hash like ours did.

Sunday: Shepherd’s Pie-Stuffed Potatoes + Jicama Citrus Salad
I’m sure you’ve seen those quick-cut videos of inventive food on Facebook, right? Have you actually tried any of them out? Well, I can now say that I have and it wasn’t that bad! While I did neglect to add additional liquid to make up for the thirstyness of the coconut flour I used, everything went more or less according to plan in this recipe/video from Tip Hero. I even dug out my large star pastry tip to pipe the potatoes onto the top! The salad though, that was a disappointment since my jicama ended up well past it’s use-by date (something a little hard to tell with the leathery outside to judge by). I will attempt the salad again, though, as I really do love jicama in cold salads.

Booze tip: I totally took a short cut on the citrus salad and bought the large container of pre-sliced fruit in extra-light syrup. If you are a fan of  greyhounds (the drink, not the dog, though they are lovely dogs), save said syrup and mix with your favorite gin for an slightly sweeter version of this simple libation. Fabulous, refreshing, and super-quick.

And that’s another week’s menu! I hope you got some good ideas from what was on our plates this week and have an excellent week in your own kitchen! Remember, it doesn’t have to be “gourmet” to be good, or even great. Make what you like, mix things up a bit, get some variety in there, and enjoy your meals!

After All, We Eat With Our Eyes…

Nibbles

Last week started out as a week where I just couldn’t be bothered with, well, much of anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary. Cooking dinner? Necessary. Filming it? Less so. (Part of it was the week, part of it is the aggravation of such a small memory card for my vlogging camera, I need to update it soon!)

But I didn’t like the idea of not doing a video–I actually enjoy putting up videos each week (if nothing else, the novelty hasn’t worn off) so I decided to do a little something different for the menu video and I hope you like it.

Direct link for the feed readers: Draw My Menu, 4.24.16

Now that the trailer’s over, let’s get to the main attraction:

Meals At Home 4/18-4/24

Meals At Home 4/18-4/24

Monday: Grain Salad w/Carrot-Ginger Dressing and a Fried Egg
From Bon Appetempt (and, yes, I realize I left out the second ‘p’ in the video), this was a simple salad with the promised “showstopper” dressing. Being able to make the carrot ginger dressing without miso is a nice change and means we have a new dressing for the salad rotation that also gives us more veggies, too.

Tuesday: Lemon-Parmesan Chicken + Spinach Salad
Aside from the pucker-power of the dressing, this chicken recipe from Mise en Place was just aboslutley delicious. It’s not often I feel like setting up a 3-step breading process, but this one was worth it. I’ve yet to see gluten-free panko anywhere yet, but even with the regular gf crumbs it’s damn tasty. I suppose I could crush some corn flakes if I wanted the different texture… Okay, I definitely have to try that next time!

Wednesday: Cheese-Stuffed BBQ Meatloaf + Green Beans + Sweet Potatoes
A freezer meal “classic” (if something can be a classic when we’ve only been doing freezer meals for a few months!), this is always a good Wednesday night supper because there’s seldom a reason to hurry dinner to the table since payroll almost always keeps Todd until 8pm at the office. The nice thing about this particular meatloaf (aside from the layer of cheese in the center and the sweet bbq sauce on top, that is) is the chopped peppers inside–it changes things up just enough so that it doesn’t feel like boring meatloaf.

Maybe next time I’ll do a couple of the Cordon Blue-style meatloaves (with ham and cheese inside) that Todd’s a fan of, I bet they’d freeze just fine!

Thursday: Pepper Pesto Pork and Zoodles + Sweet Corn
I had plenty of the Red Pepper Pesto from Table for Two from the last time I used it and decided it would go as well with the zucchini noodles as anything else. It was a successful experiment, and I’ve put the super-simple recipe down below.

Friday: Impromptu night out at Sweet Grass Dairy
I forgot, when I was making this week’s menu, that Friday was the Rose Parade and all. While we briefly entertained the idea of walking back home, having supper, and then walking back downtown for the fireworks, we decided we were more likely to stay home rather than venture back out, so hung out downtown. I have a full recap of the Friday and Saturday Rose Festival coming in video form, just as soon as I get it edited (it’s almost 3 hours of footage!), but dinner at Sweet Grass Dairy did not disappoint!

Saturday: Tomato Sauce w/Italian Sausage + Polenta-Style Grits
It’s a good thing I remembered to put the Crock Pot on before we went out to Art & Bark in the Park because once we got home both Todd and I were beat and took some long naps! All I had to do once I convinced myself to leave the fluffy blankets was to make the grits. It might take 30 minutes to make good grits (don’t even bother with the quick stuff, it’s not worth it) but very little of that time is active cooking.

Sunday: Baked Thai Salmon Chicken + Green Peas + Rice Noodles
I’ve been a bit spacey lately (Todd allows that I have had a lot on my mind) and one of those space cadet moments was completely forgetting to put salmon on the shopping list. Even though it’s on the same piece of paper as my menu. Thankfully, the sweet chili sauce worked just as well on chicken thighs as it would have on salmon, and dinner was saved. (Yes, I could have gone to the store for the salmon, but it wasn’t a compelling reason to switch out of pajamas on an otherwise go-nowhere Sunday.)

A successful kitchen experiment deserves to be shared, so here is the basic run-down of the Pork and Zoodles meal, above.

Pepper Pesto Pork and Zoodles

Serves 4

6 medium zucchini, spiralized
2 T olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
4 oz red pepper pesto
4 boneless pork loin chops
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in a large saute or frying pan, add zucchini strips and cook 5-10 minutes, until they start to cook down a bit. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir in red pepper pesto to coat the zoodles, then push the zucchini and sauce to the edges of the pan and fill the center with the pork chops.

Sprinkle pork with salt and pepper, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cover. Cook until the pork is done, 10-15 minutes depending on thickness.

Top with Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy!

And with that, I happily turn the dinner reins over to Todd for the week. Since it’s my birthday this Saturday, he’s making a lot of my favorites over the course of the week: grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, burgers fresh off the grill, and butter chicken as well. Yum!  And we’ve already decided that if there’s a night he doesn’t feel like cooking (hey, it happens), sushi will be the alternative.

What’s on your plate this week?

~Jenn

S’Waffled Toast and More!

Nibbles

Gooooooood morning! What’s so good about it? Um…. it’s here and we’re here to see it! (And that’s far better than the alternative!)

Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Counter Top, Episode 3)

I have no specific reason for being so chipper today, but I am, so I’m just going to roll with it. Join me?

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Meals at home for 4/4-4/10

Looking back on the past week’s menu, I think it was one of my more enjoyable weeks, food-wise. There’s always room for improvement, but I feel like it was well-balanced (both in time spent preparing the food as well as the variety of dishes). Here’s how it broke down:

Monday: Chicken & Chickpea Chopped Salad
This recipe from Ambitious Kitchen was a good start to the week. Quick and easy to prepare and it tasted so good! The winning flavor combo was the goat cheese + barbecue sauce. It pretty much made the salad. I can see us making this again.

Tuesday: Night out with friends!
First Tuesday’s mean a meet-up and we were once again at Northside Pies. I was in the mood for appetizers but messed up my order and was “that girl” who orders one gluten-free item and one gluten-full one. D’oh! I meant to order the Caprese Salad to go with my cheese bread on a gluten-free base, but there was some sort of short circuit between my brain and my mouth and I ordered the Feta Bruschetta instead. Oh, well! The good thing about the whole Low-FODMAP thing is that the effects are cumulative, and by reducing the amount of wheat (and therefore fructans) by having the one gluten-free item I could indulge in the accidental order and enjoy it as long as I didn’t eat the whole thing myself. (I shared some, ate some, and took the rest home for later.) I neglected to get a picture, though–oops!

Wednesday: Braised Tilapia with Artichoke Hearts + Steamed Kale
This recipe came from an old Menu Mailer subscription (but is available in this post on Saving Dinner). It’s a good, simple, but not boring fish dinner recipe and the only real change I made was to sub green onions for yellow and my arrowroot slurry for the wheat flour she suggests to thicken the pan drippings into a sauce. Forgo the lumps and use a slurry, it’ll make meal prep so much simpler.

Thursday: Chicken & Sweet Potato Stew + Brown Rice
Ah, freezer meals, they make our lives so much easier. This one needs something, but I’m not 100% sure what just yet. The recipe is from Stock Piling Moms, though mine looks a lot more tomatoey than hers does. I think a can of coconut milk might have been a good addition instead of the cup of broth added just before crocking. Or maybe just a bit more seasonings overall as once it was combined with the rice it lost some of it oomph. Not bad, just needs a little tweaking.

Friday: S’Waffled Toast + Sausage
Todd was a little late getting home so I had time to ponder what I was going to do with the French toast for dinner. Not that French toast on its own is anything but delicious, but I felt like playing a bit. Waffled French toast is nothing new around the ‘net, and a quick search turns up stuffed versions, too, so this isn’t exactly an earth-shattering invention on my part. But I do like my name for it (stuffed and waffled French toast is a bit of a mouthfull, you know? pun intended). My version of this recipe is at the bottom of this post.

Saturday: Sushi Bowls + Spring Rolls
I could eat sushi almost any or every night of the week and be blissfully happy. My wallet might not agree, nor do I always have time to make it at home. But sushi bowls are another thing entirely. Sometimes I’ll use it as a side dish but often it can stand on its own with no problem–it just depends on what you add to it! This version had the usual sweet potato, green onions, avocado, and nori plus little green peas, carrots, and sliced fried egg. And if you want to make your own Yummy sauce (aka Yum Yum Sauce, aka Japanese Steakhouse White Sauce, etc.) here’s a recipe from AllRecipes.

Sunday: (Crock) Pot Roast + Carrots + Mashed Potatoes
Sometimes you just want a good, old-fashioned Sunday dinner and this was one of those times. My best pot roast is always one done in the slow-cooker, and this one was simply seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic olive oil, and Worcestershire sauce. I propped it up on a bed of whole carrots (peeled but otherwise intact) and only added the barest amount of water to the crock pot so I wouldn’t come home to stew. There was still plently of pan juices to turn into gravy, and because the carrots were cooking in it more than the roast it was almost like a carrot jus and made for a slightly sweet gravy.

S'Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

S’Waffled Toast

For the Filling:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup fresh or frozen strawberries, mashed
2 Tbsp sugar

For the Toast:
3 eggs
2 cups milk
1-2 tsp cinnamon
1 Tbsp vanilla (or more, to taste)
10 slices bread

Preheat your waffle iron to the crispy settling and spray it with non-stick spray. (Most irons advise against this but I always ignore that–this is a messy recipe and this will make it much easier to clean up later.)

Combine the filling ingredients and adjust the sweetness to taste. If you don’t have fresh or frozen berries, I’d bet that you could stir preserves into the cream cheese and omit the sugar and be just fine.

Mix together in a medium-sized bowl the eggs, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla.

Spread the filling mixture generously on one side of a piece of bread and place a second slice on top. Depending on the size and configuration of your waffle iron and the shape of your bread, you may want to cut the sandwiches in half.

Dunk the sandwiched bread into the liquid, covering on all sides.

Place onto the waffle iron and close the lid securely. My waffle iron always needs two rounds of cooking to get anything done, these s’waffled toasts were no exception. Your mileage may vary depending on your waffle iron, use your best judgement.

Carefully remove the finished toasts from the waffle iron, serve with powdered sugar or syrup, as is the custom, and enjoy!

Have a tasty week!

 

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry + View From the Countertop #2 (video)

Nibbles

Once again I filmed this past week’s meal prep and, since I had a request after the last one, added narration to the video instead of music (maybe next time I’ll do both, depending on time).

(Direct link for the feed readers: View From the Countertop #2)

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

Meals for the week of 3.21.16-3.27.16

With the Luau the weekend before and so many delicious leftovers in the fridge, it’s probably no surprise that half of this week was made up from those.

Monday: Pulled Pork Sliders + Potato Salad
See the Luau post to get the links for the potato salad. I chopped up some of the leftover pork and mixed it with the tart bbq sauce from Fallin’s for our sliders. Easy and perfect for a Monday night supper.

Tuesday: Hawaiian Chicken Legs + Sweet Leilani Luau Salad
As I mention in the video, I’d planned to make chicken salad with the leftover legs, adding pineapple and macadamia nuts into my usual chicken salad recipe. But bad news at work had me seriously considering ice cream for supper, so I feel somewhat proud of myself for eating real food. (And let’s not kid ourselves, I had a good helping of ice cream afterwards.)

Wednesday: Beef Stir Fry + Brown Rice
Freezer meals to the rescue. Yes, we could have still been eating leftovers but I figured we needed a change of pace so pulled out one of the recent freezer meal additions. It’s a pretty simple kit: vegetables, beef, and sauce (a few tablespoons of sauce is added to the packet of beef as a marinade). I added half a head of cabbage we had in the crisper and it was a good thing I did. I’ll be adding that to the notes on my freezer meal spreadsheet–the meal would have been a little light without it!

Thursday: Luau Leftovers
They pick up our trash on Friday mornings so it was a good idea to eat, freeze, or toss anything left from the party at this point. Plus, the work news from Tuesday was/is the type to hang out all week, so a night with no cooking duties was appreciated.

Friday: Shrimp & Eggplant Curry with Cellophane Noodles
A kitchen experiment that totally worked, we enjoyed it so much that I’ve transcribed it from memory/video so you can try it, too. This is a Thai-style curry so it’s a little sweet, a little spicy, and totally delicious. The basic cubes are the little freezer cubes of chopped basil I’ve found at Trader Joe’s. They’re nice to keep on hand for recipes like this when you can’t always count on having fresh basil in the crisper. The lemongrass paste is another quick tip, found in the produce section by the fresh herbs, we also buy cilantro and ginger in paste form from time to time.

Shrimp & Eggplant Curry

serves 4

2 T olive oil
1 T garlic olive oil
1 large eggplant, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 package cellophane noodles plus water to cover
2 T Thai red curry paste
2 T grated ginger
1 T lemongrass paste
2 basil cubes (or 2 t dried basil)
1 can coconut milk
12 oz medium shrimp

Pour hot water over rice noodles in a bowl large enough to hold the bricks of noodles and an inch of water above. Let the noodles soak while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Heat olive oils in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-high heat.

Add bell pepper and eggplant to pan and saute until peppers start to soften slightly and eggplant edges start to brown.

Stir in curry paste, ginger, lemongrass, and basil, then stir in coconut milk. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer until vegetables are fully cooked.

Add shrimp, simmer and stir for about a minute, then turn off the burner and let the heat of the coconut milk mixture to finish cooking to shrimp (this helps prevent over cooking the seafood). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Drain the cellophane noodles (I find a pasta scoop works best for this, as the noodles are so small as to slip through most colanders with ease) and mix them into the shrimp and vegetables, stirring to distribute the sauce throughout.

Enjoy!

I think I’ve stumbled upon the perfect combination in eggplant and coconut milk. Usually you’d salt and press the eggplant to draw out any bitterness but, I admit, I was lazy this time and skipped that step. But the slight sweetness of the coconut milk seems to have counteracted any bitterness in the eggplant because it was the second best eggplant I’ve ever had and Todd really enjoyed it as well! (The best being this sweet eggplant dish that Bahn Thai sometimes has on their lunch buffet, it’s absolutely amazing; they leave the skin on and it’s still the best eggplant ever.)

Saturday: Corned Beef Hash + Eggs
Lazy Saturday, I slept in, it rained all day, Todd napped in the afternoon. Yeah, we did nothing much of importance and it was just fine, so a late supper of breakfast seemed like a good idea to both of us.

Sunday: Zuppa Toscana
It rained almost all of Easter Sunday as well, and since we’d all just gotten together for Todd’s birthday last weekend we’d decided to forgo a family Easter event. I grabbed the pouch of Zuppa Toscana from 12tomatoes was a good answer to an unplanned Sunday supper. Rainy weather is perfect soup weather and this one was pretty tasty. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Olive Garden I really can’t say whether it’s a convincing copycat recipe or not, but we definitely enjoyed it. Maybe next time I’ll actually plan ahead and make some fresh bread sticks to go with it.

And that work news I keep mentioning, it does deserve an explanation, but this isn’t the right post for it. I’ll try to organize my thoughts about it for the next one.