We moved!

If you'd like to see my dinner and dogs, check us all out here.

I love Lucys

I confess... I did not execute my freezer plan. It is a source of shame & disappointment. I roasted and froze some poblano peppers and asparagus. But the farmers market was not holding the magical wonders I had expected and the best laid plans fell apart.

Wah wahhhh.

But I did experience another type of magical wonder! And her name is Juicy Lucy.

I believe these inside out cheeseburgers came to my attention on some food show or another. And I immediately knew I must have one.

I decided to make ours slider sized. I made thin burger patties and pressed the cheese into the center of one. Sealed the edges. And done! The hubs heated up the grill. 4 minutes per side and we were in Juicy Lucy heaven.

 A couple were a little too excited and you could see whether they were filled with cheddar or pepperjack.

These turned out great and were a nice change. I highly recommend you get you one today!

Eating the Freezer

Hey, y'all. It's been a quiet coupla weeks here. Eating-wise, anyways. We went out of town last weekend so we tried to eat up the fridge. And this week my old man's been gone. I have yet to fire up the stove because I've been eating the freezer.

It's been no easy feat. When we have big meals, we eat on them for a bit. And then if it's freezer-friendly I freeze the leftover-leftovers. Waste not, want not, and all that. (But seriously. No food left behind.) I thought I had frozen individual meals for days. But apparently those days are up. I've had bbq pulled chicken, zucchini lasagna, roast chicken, and a nice salmon fillet for tomorrow. (Which will require actually turning the stove on.)  Basically, everything you've seen here recently. Which has been nice because, as much as I love to cook, I've enjoyed the break.

But I'm ready for it to be over. The weekend is coming. It's just going to be me and the dogs. So let's do something.

At first I was thinking, let's make pasta! I have all the stuff to do it. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!) But I don't have great counter space. Then I thought, let's make cheese. Which would be delicious. But then after you have all that fresh cheese, it goes bad pretty quickly. With the hubs out of town, I don't want to give the dogs that much cheese. Yeesh.

But tonight, after I ate my last freezer dinner of roasted chicken, it seemed so obvious...
Let's fill that freezer back up.

My initial thought was dinners. Chicken tetrazzinis and meatloaf. But it's summer and I feel like those things, while delicious, are a little heavy to cook just for fun. Maybe if they're portioned out in single servings? Nah, not it.

My next thought was stir fry. Light, delicious and you can cook it straight from the freezer to the skillet. Lots of yummy veggie ingredients.

Which led me to my next-next thought... Veggies. The Farmer's Market. It's summer. Let's take advantage! So here's the plan: tomorrow, I'm going to hit the Farmer's Market at lunch. (It's right next to my work. How great is that? I'm getting spoiled quickly.) I'm going to buy up whatever looks good for a good price. And then this weekend, I'm going to blanch veggies. I'm going to make sauces in ice trays. I'm gonna prep and pack little veggie stir fry and taco kits. Maybe branch out past veggies to marinade and freeze some meats! 

In other words, its going to be freezer-ON.

I'm excited. More to come. You know it. Until then, sleeping doggies...

Forget menus... Put a whole chicken in the slow cooker!

Last week's menu was great. We had ground turkey lettuce wraps for lunches.

Our weekly helping of blackened salmon. 



And a meatless, low carb lasagna that turned out really good and tastily better than I had dared to hope. Instead of meat, I used a mix of spinach, more zucchini and onions. And even the hubs liked it.



But my favorite, my truuuuuue favorite, was this whole chicken in the slow cooker. I've been wanting to give this a whirl since my girl friend, Anita, raved about how much she's loving coming home to this meal (and the smell).

For the bottom layer, we had red potatoes, baby carrots, onions and a healthy splash of chicken broth. And, on top, a free range, antibiotic free, blah-blah-blahhhh chicken. I threw a few lemons in and seasoned it all with some spicy Cajun seasoning. (Because, around here, if it's not spicy, it's probably dog food.) Cooked it on low for about 4 or 5 hours.  And voila!

It's a sorta odd picture. But you get the drift.

Y'all. It was so good! Flavorful from top to bottom, juicy chicken and some lovely leftovers for lunch. What more can you ask for?  Oh, yeah. It was also super easy.

Thanks, Anita.  You weren't kiddin'.

Work Week Menu Plan - June 14-19

It's Saturday! Wonderful, beautiful Saturday. It was a good week but I was still plenty ready for the weekend. We're getting Mexican food tonight so I won't have any dishes And beans, yay!

So, I've been a little more food obsessed than usual. I watched the documentary Food Inc. And Chew This TED Talks. And read some food books. Which was followed by the urge to throw the contents of our fridge in the trash. And what about food shopping - should we even eat anymore? We should just consume plants. We grow ourselves. That we keep the bugs off by gently fanning them away.

But then I got Michael Pollan's Food Rules and this simple tip helped - don't eat products with more than 5 ingredients. I love that!  All the crazy ingredients that don't sound like food AREN'T food. There shouldn't be a paragraph of ingredients on cheese labels. It should just say, like, milk and love.

In addition to that, my other takeaway was less meat. And I totally get that. But it's hard to put into play because I associate meat with fullness. So whaddya do?

Last week, I decided to do lunch falafels.

We had some TEErific falafels at an event here called the Taste of K.C. I decided to give a baked version a whirl with a falafel recipe from my favorite food site, the kitchn. I was out of baking powder so I'm definitely going to make them again with the correct ingredients. But, I think they turned out pretty well just the same. I had them with a greek yogurt mint tzatziki & cucumbers. Made for a great - meatless! - lunch.

After the Sunday falafels prep, it was time to get dinner started. Because Black Betty takes some time to get slow an low.

 

I had gotten some nice ribs on sale. (Post-Memorial day meat sales are great. Oh, and don't throw the meat in my face! While I shall eat less, I shall also enjoy on a tasty rib.)

Sunday

Dinner –Smoked Ribs with Baked Beans and Roasted Cauliflower

I'm not sure why I didn't take a right-side-up pic. But you get the drift.  

These turned out great. I did a dry rub with paprika, brown sugar, cayenne, and so forth, and then we had some sauce on the side. I love my smoker. With it being in the 90ºs consistently starting next week, I don't think the grilling is going to be fun. But the smoker can fill our outdoor food quotient.  When we have some hours to kill.

Monday

Lunch – Baked Falafels

Dinner – Thai "Noodle" Bowls

I asked the hubs what he'd like on the menu and he said a Thai "noodle" bowl? I said ab-so-lutely. (I love that he honestly enjoys the squash zoodles.) It was perfect timing too because I've been pinning a ton of pasta dishes, thinking I'd de-pasta-fy them so I had the perfect recipe. Also, I had half a bag of shredded carrots.

This turned out colorful and really tasty. I know that spaghetti squash isn't pasta. But when it tastes this good, who cares?

Tuesday

Lunch – Baked Falafels

Dinner –Slow Cooker BBQ Chicken Sliders with Roasted Zucchini

This was too easy. Chicken and barbecue sauce in the slow cooker. Annnnd done. I topped mine with leftover shredded cabbage and a big ole pickle. And it was so good.  I mean, once again, Hawaiian rolls are the business.

On Wednesday we had leftovers and on Thursday we had guests! (Did that sound like we literally had them for dinner?)  Our friend stopped by with his 2 kids on the way to Nebraska. We got pizza for the kids. It was very exciting. Sugarbear got chased around by a 4 year old and I was warmed with the memories of what it was like to have friends. Good times! To close out the week on Friday, I cooked some lovely trout fillets. And that brings us to today. The day of rice and beans! And salsa. And chile rellenos.

Last week was good. I feel like I've almost redeemed myself (from the curry-we-don't-talk-about incident). Hopefully next week is even better. We're doing our first meatless Monday. So we'll see...

Before I sign off - Happy Father's Day weekend to the fathers out there! And especially to mine. He's known to many as pastor but to me he's dad. He's the one I got my sense of humor from (sorry, Mom), my love of old movies and radio shows, and has always been there for me. (I mean, he married the hubs and I!)  He's also the one that taught me that after lunch you say 'Thank you...  So what's for dinner?' I love him to a million tiny pieces and wish I could be there on there on this special day.

Love you, Dad-Dad. And hope the rest of you have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

The Book List

This book was picked by my dear friend, Nicole, for book club.  It was a tough read.  It's long.  No one finished on time.  (I think Nikki & I may have been the only ones that pushed through.)  It's hard to get into.

And it's one of the most rewarding books I've read this year.

The Poisonwood Bible is not new, having been released in 1998.  I've been familiar with its existence but the subject matter (a missionary family in the Congo in 1959) wasn't what I naturally gravitate to (which is crime thrillers).  Once I got into it though, I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.

If you're into biting off a big hunk-o-book, I highly recommend it.

When Dinner Goes Bad

I think it says a lot about the eats last week that I started writing this last Thursday and finished it tonight, a Tuesday.  It was an emotional rollercoaster (in a most non-important way) but I think we've bounced back.  Although, once again, it's only Tuesday night.

We started strong on Sunday night.  I put together this meal kit from quite a few leftover recipe ingredients.  So it was a very good fridge cleaning meal with delightfully neat, mandolin-sliced veggies.

There's a place here that I've grown to love - aka am mildly obsessed with - called Lulu's Thai Noodle Shop.  So I decided to give it a whirl at home with zucchini "zoodles" subbed for the noodles.  I did a combo of this Spicy Perspective recipe with this Foodista one.

It turned out GREAT.  So let's savor this tasty Thai Drunken Zoodle moment shall we?

After that, it was mostly downhill.  And then sorta uphill.  But I digress.

Monday night, we had something designed purely to use up leftover cabbage.  The recipe was called a One Skillet Amish meal.  (Why?  No clue.)  The recipe featured ground turkey mixed with cabbage, pureed tomatoes and a can diced tomatoes.  I added some fresh basil, garlic and onion for a good time.  But it still just meat with cabbage and tomato sauce.  The hubs liked it but I was sorta eh.

That one skillet meal was unfortunately just the lead-up to the real failure.  *Hangs head*

I got a curry sauce from Trader Joe's.  It wasn't quite our taste but I thought it would be good on the grill.  I carefully trimmed chicken breasts, green bell peppers and onions.  Marinaded for a couple days. 

And then we didn't grill.

After the rain finally slacked off some, we were left with very hot, very humid weather.  So for some reason firing up the grill sounded like not fun on Tuesday evening.  I shoved the whole thing in the oven thinking we'd just roast it.

And it was blech.

Look at that mess.  Blargh.  My fault.  Lots of waste bc neither one of us could stand the thought of leftovers.  I was filled with shame.  As much as I hate a disappointing meal, I really hate throwing food away.

Let's use this as a learning meal and move on shall we?  (And never speak of it again.  You say Trader Joe's curry sauce to me and I'll be all, 'wahhhh?  Trader Joe's has a curry sauce?')

Wednesday, I bounced back a little with a nice chicken quarter baked over baby carrots and red potatoes.

The chicken on top really is a great way to roast veggies.  The chicken juices over the carrots and potatoes makes them just delish.

But who cares?  By Thursday, I don't even know...  We might have had some leftovers.  We might have just eaten eggs.  At this point, I was over the week.  

Do you try new things often?  Products or recipes?  I do and have typically had a pretty good track record.  Or at very least not throw in the trash results.  But all we can do is move it along.  (What curry sauce?)  It's just dinner after all.  And I have half a big bag of shredded carrots have already made for a better start to this week.  (Cliffhanger!)