Life will go on

So some of this pictures are from quite some time ago (and by quite some time, I mean like 2 weeks ago).

Let's jump back to August 25th. After going through the fridge and realizing there was nothing there, I opened the pantry and found that is was packed with tons of canned food (I don't know why I never look in there for dinner options). Thus, I made up my version of a 5 bean chili. It's very similar to my normal chili, but you just dump in whatever beans you have in the pantry at the time. I also added a small can of green chilies, which gave it a nice zing:

I actually prefer this to my normal meat chili since this seems to taste better and better as the days pass. With a normal meat chili, the beef (or turkey) seems to dry out and taste sort of bland a few days later.

Three days later, on August 28th. I defrosted the pre-seasoned pork tenderloin I picked up at Aldi's a week earlier. It was a meat and potatoes kind of day,  so I made my homemade mashed potatoes using smart balance butter and my homemade chicken stock instead of normal butter and cream. I also like to leave the skins on (after a good washing) since you get a little more added fiber. And what goes better with mashed potatoes then corn:

 The pork was very juicy, but it took a lot longer to cook then the package had directed. Of course my potatoes are awesome, but I love potatoes in general.

Sunday, August 29th, baking day. I have made the past 3 Sundays (with the exception of last Sunday since I was in NY) baking day. Baking day consists of 1 or 2 loaves of bread and a batch or two of cookies. Since I had messed up the previous week and forgot the cinnamon in my cinnamon raisin bread, I decided to redeem my self using this recipe. Bread in the oven:

Out of the oven:

And sliced:

Now my swirl wasn't as nice as the one on the recipes web-page, but it worked. It was very good. The only issue we had was when we toasted the bread. Since it has that swirl running through it, it would fall apart at those spots in the toaster and while eating it. I think next time too I would like the cinnamon flavor to run throughout the entire loaf and not just in the center.
Also on baking day I made oatmeal lace cookies. I wanted to share with you how I get them so nice and flat and lace-like:

I smoosh them down with the bottom of a glass and some parchment paper. They cook much more evenly and they also get the small holes in them that make them appear more like lace. My finished batch:

Of course they were gone in 2 days.

Going back to the pantry, since I had not gone shopping yet, I discovered a hidden plethora of pasta in the back corner of one of the shelves. I don't know why I don't make more pasta since I have so much. I decided on this recipe for dinner. The presentation:

I unfortunately did not have fresh asparagus or fresh tomatoes, but drained and rinsed canned versions also worked wonderfully in a pinch. I bet it tastes a little fresher with the right ingredients.

For some reason I have no pictures from the week of the 29th other than the pasta before. Since I left in a hurry at the end of the week, I didn't really leave much in the way of easy food for Mike. One of the days I was in NY, I guess he got hungry enough and really wanted the spicy chicken cilantro sausages we had in the fridge. But we didn't have any buns or rolls, so he decided to make his own:

Looks good, right? Well when I got home from NY there was still some left so I was able to experience his cooking skills. He did a wonderful job making the buns and they were very good. I need to get him to cook more often!

After I returned home from NY, I had to work the two days right after, but yesterday, Sunday, was baking day again. I don't know what I was thinking, but I made a loaf of bread using some rye flour I got on sale at Whole Foods, but I didn't take any pictures! I tried a little slice yesterday and it was wonderful. It's going to be for Mike's sandwiches throughout the week.
From my pink plaid Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, I made their basic chocolate chip cookie recipes expect I used only butter (no shortening) and used half semi-sweet chocolate pieces and half white chocolate pieces. That one recipe made a lot:

You can never go wrong with chocolate chip cookies :)

And for dinner last night, in honor of Grandma Mary, I made a chicken with black beans and rice dish from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Now it's not the same black beans and rice that my Grandma used to make, but at least it has some of the same elements:

The recipe sounded good, but I think the way it was made caused the dish to loose it's luster. I think the rice should have been partially cooked before going into the oven and the chicken should have been covered by the tomatoes and black beans while cooking in the over to keep the chicken moist. Next time I will make those adjustments and let you know how it goes!

I think we are all caught up. I am very excited for tonight's dinner. Last week, the night before I left for NY, Mike and I went out to dinner at a local restaurant called Taqueria Monterrey. They had some amazing authentic tacos, one of them being a shrimp taco. So tonight I am going to try and make some shrimp tacos using corn tortillas, fresh avocados, and fresh tomatoes. Until then, please enjoy this photo of my Grandma and I, after her stroke, back in 2004:

September 4th, 2010

A day that will never be forgotten because of a woman who will always be loved. My beloved Grandma Mary passed away in her home on the morning of  September 4th, 2010. 7, almost 8, years ago she suffered a stroke that left her speech limited and some loss of movement on her right side. This passing is finally the release she needed after being trapped inside her own head for the past 7 years. But I still remember Grandma just as she always was. She was an amazing woman who was loved by so many. I have so many great memories of all the time we spent together and I feel so blessed that I was able to have those times with her. To this day I still cherish many things she has giving me over the years, both possession wise and personality wise. I love to shop and do laundry. I love to sew and craft. I love to cook for others. But most importantly, I love Grandma and I always will.

I know I have been MIA for awhile on this blog, especially this past week since I was in NY with my family. I am trying to get back on track since the past 3 weeks have shown me a constant schedule at work (4 days off, 3 days on) and hopefully it will stay that way. This past week has shown me how much family really means to me and how much I want to be just like my Grandma.

Stay tuned for more :)

I need to learn how to blog again right after I make the food

Work has been so so. I enjoy what I do, don't get me wrong and I am still aspiring to go to vet school or at least vet tech school but some of the people I work with make it miserable sometimes. All they care about is the money and not the well being of their employees or their clients. It is unfortunate.

Aldi had mussels as a special one week. Yea, mussels, I know, weird. But they were just pre-cooked mussels in a simple tomato sauce that you just needed to heat up in a skillet (or the microwave if you are lazy). I paired them with some grouper I pan fried in the sauce and then added it all to rice:

Really easy and not bad for mussels from a box from Aldi. Too bad I didn't buy more.

 Another easy meal, and the only reason why I am sharing it with you is because Mike made it and poured me a glass of Chianti to go with it:

It's so wonderful what fresh herbs can do to a easy, everyday meal. Which reminds me, it's time to plant herbs again for the fall Florida growing season!

My newest Betty Crocker cookbook (the breast cancer awareness one) as been my go to book for pretty much all of August. Rosemary pork chops with summer squash was our fancy dinner last week:

Sadly, I did not make the bread. We had gone shopping at Whole Foods Market (since I had a gazillion coupons) and I saw these take-n-bake cheesy foccacia rolls that sounded like they would go good with pork. And they did. The only issue I had with this meal is the rosemary was a little over powering. I did use fresh rosemary and maybe I did use a little too much. Eh....at least the pork was really good!

We still have a ton of fish in the freezer. So, with out fail, we have fish almost every week. I forgot where I found this recipe, but it's white fish with some sort of tomato vinegar sauce:

It was all right. Ehh....something I probably won't make again. I was just trying to use up some tomatoes before they went bad.

This past Sunday was baking day. I finally had a Sunday off and after having cinnamon raisin bread earlier in the week I decided to try and make some myself. Mixer in action:

And the two finished loves:

But guess what I forgot to do....put the cinnamon in!!! So it was just whole wheat raisin bread, no cinnamon....tear. Ugh, I fail at baking. Oh well....Mike still liked it.

While the bread was raising, I made a ton of peanut butter cookies (using a recipe from my Betty Crocker cook book):

I thought I would be a nice neighbor and take some cookies over to the new neighbors:

I didn't have any paper plates, just these penny bags. It works.

And, finally, dinner was also a recipe from the Betty Crocker cook book, pepper lime chicken. My make shift broiler rack:

And Mike's plating of the final dinner:

The chicken was very lime-y, which we loved. And it suggested we serve it with salsa, which was a good call as well.

And there you have it. Until next time, please enjoy this photo of our little tree froggy leaving his hiding spot to head out into the night:

OMG....a new blog.....what a shock!

You know that feeling you get when you make something with your own two hands that you really can enjoy? I forgot how good that feels. I need to cook more.

When Mike was out of a town a few weeks ago I didn't do any cooking.....zip, zil, nada. But when he came home he brought me this book:

 I think this cookbook is based on this blog. It's pretty neat and has a log of tips for how to deal with your fresh (or not so fresh) catch. So back on the first of the month I decided to try one of the poached grouper recipes:

It came out really good and the left over veggies from the poaching liquid made a nice topping for the steamed veggies. And, no, I did not make the bread. It's sad, I know. I got the rolls on discount at a WalMart bakery.

The following day I still had some cooking fever in me, but not to the point where I wanted to stand in front of the hot stove. So I tried this slow cooker recipe to use up some country style beef short ribs I had:

I know it doesn't look very appetizing, but it was good with just the right amount of spice. I just need to learn how to time my rice cooker  right to match up with dinner time!

Then, on the 6th, after watching Rachael Ray make some sort of meatloaf burger things, Mike was inspired to make a similar thing with turkey. And thus we have the turkey meatloaf burger:

Of course we had no buns, but they were excellent just by themselves. Mike used mozzarella cheese and basil in them which made them even that much more excellent. And they tasted even better a few days later.
Yum-o  :)

And finally tonight. I had planned on roasting a chicken tonight so I invited the neighbor over (she bailed at the last minute, but I still made everything I planned on). Earlier in the day I made a blueberry strawberry crumble with walnut topping using the recipe from this month's Food Network magazine. Before:

And after:

Delicious! I sort of want to try the variation with cornmeal. I would have never thought to use cornmeal for a crumble. Using a variation of the lemon roast chicken recipe from the Feast book I talked about last blog we have tonight's chicken. Before:

And after:

And I paired the chicken with the rice-pasta pilaf recipe also from this month's Food Network magazine:

Wonderful! I am glad I made everything because it was a great dinner and now we have home made left overs for the rest of the week....the best kind of left overs. And I will also be making chicken stock tomorrow using my leftover carcass. I love home made chicken stock!

Until next time, please enjoy this photo of a little tree frog who has taken residence above the left half of our sliding glass doors:

What happens when friends are in town...

Remember the last post where I cooked that big ham the first weekend Mike's friend was in town? Well ever since then we really haven't done much cooking cause Mike's buddy wanted to go out to eat all the time and try all these places around Tampa Bay, which was cool and all, but really draining on the bank account and our home cooking time.Unfortunately, Mike's friend has finished his rotation and left town. He will be back again, but probably not till next year. Gives us time to save up some more money :)

One of my bosses at work transferred to a new clinic, so on her last day I made some low fat, cholesterol free chocolate cupcakes (with little powdered sugar butterflies):

 I think I got the recipe from my low fat, low cholesterol cookbook. Anyway, they were super moist and gone by the end of the day.

A few days later, on the 12th, I had Mike cook up some stir fir veggies that we picked up at Aldi's. I just wanted to share Mike's plating with you :

For being from a bag ( with no preservatives, additives, or fake sugars) it came out really good.

 As with every post, Mike craves pizza sometime during the course of the week, so he made some on the 16th:

I think it was olive and spinach pizza with basil. Now you may be asking were the spinach is? Well Mike mixed some of it in with the crust. It was good but I think he over did it on the fresh basil. We have a lot of basil growing in the garden and I just think he wanted to use as much as he could.

On one of my recent trips to Borders, I found this book in the bargain section for only $7.99:

I love her shows on Food Network and The Cooking Channel ( even though we don't have cable any more). Granted a lot of the meals in here are designed for holidays or entertaining there are some easy, 2 person week night meals. I got a deal on bone-in pork chops so I made her crispy pork chop recipe. She asks you to pound them thin before frying, so they are pretty much like pork cutlets:

Look how big that pork chop looks! And I paired it with sweet potato fries (per Mike's request) and the last of the corn on the cob. I know it's a really odd combination, but it worked. Even though the pork isn't that healthy (breaded and pan fried in peanut oil), it is homemade and it didn't cost us that much money :) And here is my wonderful mess :

I have a love/hate relationship with cooking with oil and so does my stove.

Until next time please enjoy this link (I know, a link, not a picture, crazy!).  I saw this in a catalog we got and I am totally going to make some thing like this when I have kids some day (and I mean some day way, way, way, in the future).

Slightly backed up....

I am still getting used to blogging on this new computer (my sweet old tablet sort of kicked the bucket). Plus Mike's buddy is in town for the month for one of his rotations at a local hospital, so we have been going out to eat a lot. Shame on us.

Traveling back to Saturday, June 26th. I worked the close shift again and Mike wanted to try out some new fish breading that we picked up at the store:

 He pan fried it and paired it with our favorite potato fries. It was okay. Maybe it was the breading because I know Mike knows how to cook fish. At least the fires were super!

 A few days later, on June 29th, I had a meeting after work so Mike made himself a pizza:

I think it was onion and olive. I didn't have any fresh pizza, but I had some the next day and it wasn't that bad. But Mike always makes wonderful crusts :)

The following night, I had the time and the energy to "cook" dinner:

Nothing fancy. Now why did I say "cook". Well I boiled the pasta, baked the turkey meatballs I picked up at Aldi's, made some of my easy sauce, and picked some fresh basil from the garden. Pretty easy. For some reason I felt the need to try and plate my food in an appeasing way. It appeased Mike.
I also picked up some angel food dessert shells from Aldi and "made" dessert:

Desserts shells filled with thawed strawberries, blueberries and raspberries, and topped with fat free whipped topping. So good. And not too heavy or calorie rich. I wish I was good at making angel food cake.

Mike's buddy was coming to stay with us for the weekend and I knew he was sort of on a diet, so I decided to try these cookies :

 They are just peanut butter ( the all natural kind of course, none of that added oil crap), sugar, egg ( I used one whole egg instead of 2 egg whites) and vanilla extract. They were sooooo yummy! You wouldn't even guess that they were made without butter or flour!

 Later that night, while we were waiting for Mike's buddy to show up. I decided to try out a recipe I found in the copy of Cooking Light I picked up at the airport. It was the spicy soba noodle bowl with chicken. The whole thing cooking:

Why would I pick something as obscure as soba noodles? Well we actually had some that we had bought back in Ohio at one of the Asian markets and they needed to be used up. This sounded simple enough. The finished bowl:

It was very nice. The sliced jalapeno gave it just the right amount of heat, and broth was excellent. I definitely need to try more recipes with soba noodles in them.

4th of July was my turn to make dinner for Mike's buddy (after going out to dinner a few times). I decided to make the 8lb honey baked ham that I bought at Aldi's about 2 months ago for $4 off (so it was like $7 for 8lbs!!!). With the ham we had, you guessed it, our wonderful potato fries, only this time I added some chili powder to see what it would do. And we also had salad with some fresh tomatoes from the garden and cucumber. We even used the fancy wooden salad set Mike's Mom sent us:

Boy, was that a lot of ham, but it was very good ham! It came pre-cooked, I just had to re-heat it and add the glaze. I made way too much because we had enough leftovers to feed a small army. I will also need to add more chili powder to the fries since I didn't get much of a kick from them.
Dessert that night was a special treat. I found this recipe while looking for something else. Look at what tofu can do:

Ta da! A berry tofu pudding pie. It was soooooo good for being tofu! I have made a chocolate tofu pie before that also turned out really well. The only thing I think I would change for next time would be to use a graham cracker crust. The plain pie crust tasted sort of out of place.

And finally, on to tonight. I bought corn on the cob last week at Aldi since they had some already. And when I saw this recipe I knew I had to go buy some feta cheese. And, to make it a very healthy meal, we also had turkey burgers with fresh tomatoes from the garden:

I never would have thought to mix feta cheese with butter and herbs and then spread it on corn (and a little on my burger). It was delicious! I made extra butter so I am going to try it on a lot of things in the coming week.

Until next time, please enjoy this photo of the new guardian of the tomato plants:

I don't know what kind of spider it is, but it was about 3 inches long and had huge fangs. Scared the crap out of me!