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Sunday
Molasses-Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Potatoes (from Simple Weeknight Favorites)
May 18th was our second anniversary. I wanted to make something nice for us without having to spend too much time cooking in the kitchen. This dish seems like it would be a fuss to make, but it wasn’t. The pork tenderloin is marinated in a molasses-lime juice mixture while sweet potatoes and carrots are roasted in more molasses and juice in the oven. The pork and marinade are added to the roasting dish and cooked to the appropriate temperature. The result is a juicy, tender roast with a subtle molasses flavor. We enjoyed this a great deal, especially since it required very little effort on my part. Many of the recipes from this book are the same: delicious and deceptively simple.
Monday
Tomato, Basil, and Three-Cheese Ravioli with Bolognese Sauce and Baked Zucchini Fries (from Tracey’s Culinary Adventures)
Mondays are rough days, usually. So, we ate the remainder of the ravioli we had last week. For the veg, I baked up these zucchini fries, which require little more than cutting up the zukes and breading them. Very simple and quite tasty. Usually, I make a sour cream and Parmesan dip for the zucchini, but I figured that the bolognese sauce would work just as well. And it did.
Tuesday
Paris Mushroom Soup (from Around My French Table)
The French Friday recipe this week was supposed to be an asparagus soup. Until recently, I always liked the sound of that asparagus soup. Now, I can’t stomach the idea of it. But I did like the idea of having soup. I settled on this soup, which the FFwD group made a while ago. It’s not the prettiest soup, but it was easy to make and tasted great. Mushrooms are one of my absolute favorite things to eat, and mushroom soup is one of my favorite ways to eat them. This was really quite nice.
Thursday
Baked Beans (from Alton Brown), Sour Cream Cornbread (from Country Cooking), and Steamed Spinach
I had a craving for baked beans. It happens. I decided to make that the protein of the meal and supplemented it with some cornbread and spinach. I wasn’t thrilled with the spinach, but I knew I needed the greens. I ate them first to make sure I got them into me. The cornbread was okay, but I think it would have been better if I’d left out the rosemary. That was really not necessary, and it didn’t really jive with the rest of the meal. Also, I’m not a big fan of adding things to cornbread, even if it’s something as simple as rosemary. I prefer my cornbread to just be cornbread. That tends to go better with baked beans anyway. I really like these beans: a little sweet, a little savory, definitely full of flavor. The only bad thing about them is that I have to smell them cooking all day long! They stay in the oven 6-7 hours, and oh, do they smell good!
Not much to say about this week. Simple meals, all of which were easy and fast to make. Pretty much about what I can handle right now.
Saturday
Buffalo Turkey Burgers (from Taste of Home Comfort Food Diet Cookbook), sweet potato fries, and carrots
I am a sucker for anything with buffalo sauce. (The recipe actually called for “Louisiana hot sauce,” which I’m not convinced is the same thing as buffalo sauce, so I used Frank’s.) The ground turkey is mixed up with some sauce and spices, and the recipe had celery as a burger topping, which I thought was a little weird. Also, I hate celery, so it was definitely out. And I made my burgers on the small side, so they’re a little sad-looking. I wish they tasted better, but I actually think that has to do with the current state of my tastes than the recipe itself. This had way too much cumin in it. Geordie thought they were fine, so maybe I’m just sensitive to cumin right now? I’d make these again, but I’d cut way back on the cumin. And add a little more sauce. The recipe suggested 1 tablespoon of sauce to be divided among 4 hamburger buns. I’m pretty sure we used about a tablespoon each. It’s an okay recipe, but it really needs some adjusting.
Sunday
Bacon Mac & Cheese (from Food Network Magazine) and corn
Definitely not healthy, but it was Mother’s Day, and I wanted some comfort food. A little complicated, because it was all made from scratch (well, except for the pasta). Good mac and cheese has to start with a good homemade cheese sauce. There’s no getting around it. It’s totally worth it. Not something I’d make often, but definitely a nice treat every once in a while. Like, maybe once a month. If that. But, oh, it’s so good.
Monday
Tomato, Basil, and Three Cheese Ravioli with bolognese sauce and salad
I did not make this ravioli. I do not usually buy prepackaged ravioli from the store – for so many reasons. Our local grocery store, however, carries its own brand of all-natural ravioli, which also eschews the use of added colors and preservatives. There’s nothing on the ingredient list that doesn’t belong there. Including onions! So, I’m cool with it. The sauce was leftover from my homemade batch last week, so that’s something. This was a great meal to have on Monday, a day which is usually a tiring one for me. The salad took longer to put together than the pasts dish. The salad, by the way, was pretty blah. Salads really aren’t my thing. The homemade croutons were a nice touch, but still. It’s just lettuce and carrots. At least the raspberry-balsamic vinegar was awesome.
Tuesday
Hamburgers with sweet potato fries
Pretty standard stuff here. Nothing I haven’t done before. I used frozen sweet potato fries because I didn’t feel like messing with sweet potatoes, and I still haven’t perfected the crispiness of homemade fries. This was just a nice, filling dinner that took no time at all, and I really don’t have anything bad to say about it.
Thursday
Grits with Avocado, Cheese, and Bacon
Um, I seem to have forgotten to get a picture of this. But, that’s okay. It was just grits, with some cheese, avocado, and bacon. And a little chipotle chili powder. Nothing very exciting. But it was easy to make, very fast to put together, and hit my comfort food craving right on the nose. Mmm, grits.
Friday
Toasted Fruity Israeli Couscous (from Five Ingredient Fix) and corn
I really wish I liked this book better than I actually do. Some of the recipes in it are really fantastic, and others are just . . . well, a little on the dull side. This is one that I had marked for making, and I made it this week because it sounded pretty simple to do. And it was. The couscous is toasted along with some pistachios, then you just add water and cook the couscous as you normally would. Toasting it first really does bring out a nice level of flavor. After cooking, I threw in some chopped dried apricots and some golden raisins, along with some shredded chicken. Before serving, it got a splash of blood orange olive oil (which I had also used to cook the chicken in), which added an extra zing of fruitiness. This was a pretty decent dish and took very little in the way of effort. And that’s the nice thing about the recipes in this book: when they work, they really do work.
It was a week of simple, quick meals, which will continue into next week. Pretty much everything I made this week is something I’ve made before, so it was a low-effort week, which I very much needed. I’m feeling okay most of the time, but when I get hungry, it comes up on me fast, and I’m not in the mood to take forever preparing dinner. These meals were exactly what I needed this week!
Sunday
Tacos! (made with homemade taco seasoning from Brown Eyed Baker)
One of the best things about making tacos is that you don’t actually have to do much cooking. I’m not sure if there’s any cooking technique easier than browning meat (well, cooking pasta, maybe). All the other prep can be done while the meat is absorbing the taco seasoning and water after browning. Geordie made himself a nice soft taco, while I opted for the taco salad route. Not exactly authentic Mexican cooking (it was Cinco de Mayo, after all), but it was tasty enough, and very easy to make!
Monday
Tofu Steaks (from La Fuji Mama), Edamame, and Gyouza
Sadly, storebought gyouza. I would love, someday, to make homemade gyouza, but that’s not something I’m willing to tackle right now. What I needed on Monday was a quick, easy meal, and this worked. The gyouza just needed to be warmed up, the edamame (frozen in the bag) spent just a few minutes in the microwave, and the tofu was pan-fried in sesame oil for about fifteen minutes. No recipe (though La Fuji Mama does provide one, but it’s more technique than recipe), and it all comes together in about 30 minutes. Perfect. And with enough edamame left over for lunch the next day. We ate our tofu with ponzu sauce, but anything would be acceptable. Another easy to adapt recipe.
Wednesday
Oven-Fried Chicken (from Calorie Countdown Cookbook) and Sweet Potato & Carrot Mash
Another very quick, very easy meal. I love cooking chicken this way: marinate in buttermilk, coat in seasoned panko, set over a rack on a baking sheet, and bake. Simple, flavorful, and so juicy.It’s intended as a base for a healthier chicken parmesan meal, but the truth is that it’s a good base for anything that involves pan-fried chicken. We ate ours with BBQ sauce, but any sauce would work really. I used thin chicken breasts to cut down on the cooking time, so this is another dish that can be brought together in about twenty minutes, give or take. The potato-carrot mash took longer, but most of the work in that is all the chopping involved!
Thursday
Spaghetti (with homemade sauce) and Salad
When I was deciding on meals this week, I gravitated toward dishes I can make without recipes. I have been making the base for this pasta sauce for almost a decade now, and it’s just something I can throw together from the top of my head. It’s all about personal taste. Not enough sugar? Add a little more. Needs some more salt? Okay. More herbs? Yup. A little red wine? Sure thing. It’s incredibly adaptable. For this one, I added mushrooms and ground beef for more heartiness. In truth, this isn’t a fast meal – good pasta sauce needs a couple hours to develop flavor, and this one usually simmers for 2-3 before it’s ready. But it’s not work-intensive, and the extra sauce freezes terrifically. So, no complaints here. It went very nicely with the whole wheat pasta, and though I wasn’t impressed with the Romaine salad, I was glad I’d made it. The homemade croutons were the best part though!
