Nacho Nacho Man!

We needed a quick supper tonight because it's meeting night, so I made NACHOS!  Who doesn't LOVE nachos? 
A pound of ground beef cooked up with chili powder, salt, pepper, and taco sauce.  Chips on a pizza stone, put the meat ontop, cheese, olives, salsa, pop it in the oven, and put sour cream and shredded lettuce on the top. 
There it is, folks.
Oh, and I haven't cooked lately because we had the CO and circuit assembly...and Ivy had the stomach flu for a few days.  I don't really cook when someone is sick.  We eat light things like toast and cereal.  In case we get it.  But I think we're home free!

Powder Soup

I had to make supper quickly tonight because we were going in service after Mike got home from work.  So while browsing in our little supermarket called "Ole's", I ran across a bag of powdered soup-flavor?  Creamy Wild Rice.  The brand was Shore Lunch.  Mom said she tried it recently and liked it, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  Guys, this soup only takes 20 minutes!  We ate it with flaky Grands biscuits and it was a nice little homey supper.  Mike has a cold, so he enjoyed the warmth, and it went down easy.  The kids loved it.  The baby loved it. 
We also did not end up going in service, by the way.  Some that were going out with us ended up with colds.  Mike too.  Gotta recover from assembly!

Don't knock the powdered soup.  It's totally worth it.

Peas N Pasta

I could not, for the life of me, remember why on Earth I bought so many fresh herbs at the grocery store last!  But I knew I had to find out because I didn't want them to go bad.  Then I found it...a pasta dish with parmesan cheese, fresh herb pesto, bacon, and sweet peas.
So, I put together the pesto, which consisted of olive oil, garlic, tarragon, parsley, and mint leaves.  It also needed pine nuts, but I ended up forgetting to get those, and all I had was walnuts, which I added.  Blend it up. 
Then I cooked the pasta.  While the pasta was cooking, I put butter into a pan with 2 big shallots.  That's right, shallots.  I love them too much.  They have such a great flavor!  I used to think that people used them to seem fancy, but that's actually not the case.  They DO have a purpose!  Then you add bacon, then peas.  Then white wine, salt, pepper, and cream.  When the pasta is done, put it in the sauce, mix it up, add the pesto, then some fresh grated parmesan cheese, and WALLA!
I don't know how to spell that.  You get the point.
Oh, and I thought my hubby would appreciate extra meat, so I sauteed him up a pan of morrocan flavored shrimp.  I got this morrocan rub from Pampered Chef.  I have no idea if it was good, I can't even smell shrimp.  I think it's gross.  But the honey liked it! 
I think almonds would have been much better than walnuts.  My husband loves walnuts, so he LOVED it!

Sandwich heaven...

Tonight we had pork sandwiches.  I started by cooking country style pork ribs on 350 for a few hours.  I pulled them out when they were falling apart.  Oh, and I put salt, pepper, garlic, and olive oil all over them and put about a half cup of water in the pan so they didn't dry out.
Then I put water, olive oil, sugar, and a little bit of vinegar in a pan and put sauteed shallots in there.  I cut up some strawberries and added that to the pan and let it cook down.  We poured the strawberry concoction ontop of the ribs that I had shredded, along with toasted hoagie rolls, arugula, and swiss cheese.  So delicous!  I was swimming in the meat and strawberries.  It tasted great together!
I also made quinoa for a side dish, and I wanted to make rice and beans, but thought it might be more healthy to have quinoa insteaed, so I cooked the quinoa, rinsed it, cooked some garlic in olive oil, added cumin, thyme, oregano, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of rinsed black beans, and some onions in there and added the quinoa to that.  Right at the end, I doused it in cilantro.  Mmmm!!!  It was like a tasty taco!  There was so much flavor...I think I know what happened last time we had quinoa, I didn't rinse it before I cooked it, and we didn't rinse it after, so it was too thick, and it seemed like no matter what we did to make it not so sticky, it just got stickier and thicker.  Ewwww!
We also had canteloupe, and much to my happiness, we ran out of ranch dressing, so I didn't have to sit at the table and watch my pretty little girls dunk their fruit into ranch dressing.  They LOVE canteloupe with ranch.  How horrid!
And we drank cherry Kool-Aid.  Come on, who doesn't like cherry kool-aid?!?!  It was the best part of my meal.
If ever I am worried that someone won't like my meal, at least we have the option of cherry kool-aid to wash it down, so the last taste is delightful.

Salt, Salt, and more Salt

We had company yesterday, so Liz and I decided to make pounded out chicken rolled up with salt, pepper, nutmeg, ricotta, spinach, and proscuitto.  We WAY oversalted the little cute chicken bundles!  We made them with this mushroom marsala sauce, thanks to Rachael Ray.  And then we made some quinoa with garlic, fresh thyme, salt, pepper, zucchini, green onions, and shallots. 
For some reason, the quinoa came out quite tasteless even though I toasted it before cooking it.  And it was sticky.  Super sticky.  And thick.  I need to work on my quinoa making skills.  Still delicious though.
And the chicken was too salty.  With the mushroom marsala sauce, it was almost inedible.  The sauce was unbearably salty.  I cooked the mushrooms just perfect, because they weren't slimy and soft, they were still firm in the middle, which is a must when cooking mushrooms.  So that was on the plus side.  The chicken had good flavor, but I must be careful next time to not put in too much proscuitto.  It's so salty!
So...we had salt for supper.  What did you have?

Fried Failure

I didn't have much time to make supper last night because my sister came over and we painted the girl's bedroom...then I had to clean my super messy pig-sty of a house.  So I pulled out the pollock, thinking, "fish is fast."  But I decided to make a beer batter and fry it in my deep fryer.  Quick?  Wrong. 
The fish wouldn't separate.  It was stuck in this giant clump of ice.  After prying it apart so I head shreds of fish dried off enough, I battered them and put them in the fryer.  I didn't have paper towel to drain them, so I thought I was being a genius and put them on a paper bag. 
Friends, paper bags do not work as well as paper towels.  There is no contest.
Then I made green beans, but I wanted to make them yummy, so I put some sliced almonds in my wok...and burnt them.  So bad.  I redid it, but only had about a tablespoon of slivered almonds for a whole bag of beans.  I added a citrus basil herb I have from pampered chef, and they turned out pretty good.  Not enough almonds though.  We also had princess shaped mac n cheese.  Yes, princess shaped.  Shoes, crowns, pumpkins, and castles.  And shaped noodles are far to dense to make them into mac n cheese.  Maybe I'll use them for soup.  Princess soup.  What little girl wouldn't fall over and be in heaven?!?!
The fish was WAY too greasy and didn't have enough salt.  My husband had horrible heartburn all night. 
I think I'll retire with the fried fish.
I'll save that for camping. 

Green Goodness

I went in service all day yesterday, so I woke up with the intent of making myself a yummy salad to entice myself to hold off on the heavy junky food so I could feel the greatness of veggies.  I always feel great after a salad, therefore I eat at least two salads every single day.  I'm actually rather obsessed with salad.
I get the Rachael Ray Everyday magazine, and in this month's issue, there was a recipe for a strawberry spinach salad.  I thought I would be able to whip it up in no time, but I had to start by making the strawberry vinagrette from scratch.  It included:  strawberries, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil, and shallots.  After that, I sauteed a chicken breast after taking all the "wierds" off of it.  I took the chicken out of the pan when it was done and added cut up strawberries, balsamic vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper to the pan, getting all the chicken drippings on the strawberries as well.  The greens I had were baby spinach leaves, which I LOVE!  I love all different greens, and have only recently discovered how lovely and delicate each variety tastes.  Arugula is fantastic, especially on sandwiches, and a butter blend salad is good with cucumbers and tomatoes.  I mix butter lettuce and iceberg because only butter lettuce makes for a very soft salad.  I need that crunchy aspect.
So...as for assembling the salad, First it's baby spinach.  Then crumbled chevre goat cheese, which is very creamy.  I thought it would be a hard crumble like feta, but when I ate it, it was very creamy in the salad, and cut some of the acidity of the strawberries.
Back to the salad...then chicken, strawberries, and vinagrette.
TRY IT!!!!!  It takes salads to a whole new world!!!
And a person can never have too many greens.  They're just so delightful.

Hola!

Hispanic food...We had chicken tacos tonight.  If I would have known it would be so smokey, I would definately have NOT made it on a meeting night.  I heated up my grill pan and while that was warming, I cut some cabbage and put lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper in it.  Then I put green onions on the grill with salt and pepper and oil.  After those were grilled, I put the chicken on.  I used chicken breasts that had garlic lemon seasoning...they were on sale.  So I grilled those up.  I cooked up some bacon during all of this chaos and crumbled it in with the sliced chicken.  Then I threw some granny smith apples that were cut up in matchstick pieces and added them to the cabbage and sliced green onions.  Added some more lemon juice, salt, pepper, and olive oil.  I bought some queso fresco and we had that crumbled over the tacos.  Oh, and I grilled the tortillas, which gave them this scrumptious smokey flavor.
The tacos were AWESOME and I will totally make them again.  Delicious...and healthy too!  We feasted until we could feast no more.  That's a lie.  I feasted until I had to run into the bedroom to change my clothes for meeting because supper took longer than expected, and we had only 15 minutes to get our butts out the door to meeting!  Complete chaos.  With happy tummies.

I need a drink!

We had company last night and I had NO food, but after searching in the depths of my chest freezer in the garage, I found 3 pounds of hamburger and 2 pounds of bacon!  Yipee!
So, I made burgers, but added thyme, salt, pepper, and bits of salami.  Then baked them and topped them with bacon.
I also made coleslaw but mixed in crushed pineapple.  It was wierd, it tasted like that fluffy stuff old ladies always make and bring to get togethers.
However, I baked the crap out of the burgers.  So they were HORRIBLY dry!  Let this be a lesson:
it IS possible to overcook hamburgers.
We ate our dry hamburgers with french fries and coleslaw.
And had lots of juice to wash it down.

A WOK

I got this new fabulous Wok from Ikea, so I decided to put it to use right away.  I tenderized some round steak with my new wonderfully fancy meat mallot from Pampered Chef.  I wok-d that until it was almost done, then put it in a bowl to the side.  Then I did some frozen stir fry veggies.  I put those in the bowl with the meat when they were done.  Then I had this bag of homemade fettucinne noodles that I cooked until almost done, and I used olive oil, sesame oil, fresh garlic, soy sauce, and sugar.  I wok-d the noodles and combined it all.  It took under 15 minutes for my entire meal to be finished, and when I served it to the family, my oldest girl Lucy said, "mommy!  I LOVE this supper!  It's my favorite!"
I guess they like the veggies...but I think it has a lot more to do with the noodles.