Mini Meatloaves

we're totally running out of food, but it's okay because friday is payday...so Liz brought me some hamburger a couple of days ago, and mom brought me a bag of groceries yesterday.  Our lame supper turned out good.
we had mini meatloaves.
I made my normal meatloaf recipe, and put them in a cupcake pan instead of a big loaf pan because mike was starving and i took a nap for too long so i was sleeping when he got home.  anyhow, for the top i mixed sweet and sour sauce, brown sugar, spicey brown mustard, pepper, and ketchup.  then put that on the tops right at the end and broiled them.
it was good...my explanation point doesn't work so i don't seem excited but i really am.  :-)
along with it we had a mixture of canned wax and green beans.  not the highlight of my cooking career.  and we had a salad.
Not too bad for a family with no food.  thanks mom and liz. (exclamation point) :-()

Smoked bbq beef brisket & Red Potato Salad

This one was not fully my making.  Oh wait...all I did is sit there and look cute while dad did it all.  :-)  (jk) Anyhow, we had this GINORMOUS brisket, so dad trimmed the fat off until there was 1/4" or less of fat all over the whole thing.  Then we cut it in 3rds because it was so big and we needed it finished in 6 hours instead of 8.
Let me tell you, a brisket is SO tough.  We baked it for a few hours on 350 in beef boullion, and apple cider.  We could hardly poke the fork in, it was like leather!
So we cooked it longer another 2 hours after dipping it in a "mop" sauce dad made of...um....like apple cider, tomato sauce, can of diced tomatoes, garlic, salt, cumin, chili powder, whiskey, and brown sugar.  We let it boil down a lot.
Then dad cut up some maple wood and put that in the smoker.  He kept dunking the meat in the sauce every 30 minutes or so, but it was DONE at an hour more.  So I guess he only did it a couple of more times.  It was sooo tender!
We decided to chop it up and put it on some fresh chewy buns.  SSSOOOO good!  Our first brisket was a total success.  We watered the "mop sauce" down with more apple cider because it was super strong, and used that to moisten the meat after it was chopped up.
We had red potato salad with it.  I took red potatoes, cooked and chopped them up, and added diced red onion, celery, zucchini, green onion, and a BUNCH of hard boiled eggs because I love hard boiled eggs in my potato salad.  And for the sauce, I did it was 2/3 greek yogurt and 1/3 mayonnaise to make it more healthy with more protein.  I also added sweet relish, salt, pepper, garlic powder, parsley, and dill.  Only a little big of dill though.
Everyone loved it!  The potato salad just needed more sauce.  Too dry.  But that can be fixed.  And the greek yogurt was good in it too.  Y'all should try this one.

It's a dream!-breakfast, that is

This doesn't sound that wonderful.  But for breakfast I did this:
fry an egg overhard.
Then toast a piece of bread.  Butter it.  Add fresh parmesan cheese and real bacon bits on it and the egg.

It's so good I wanted to go back for seconds.  And thirds.  And fourths.  And fifths.
But I stopped after seconds.  Figured 2 eggs and 2 pieces of toast was sufficient for breakfast.
Try it.  Really, don't knock it till you try it.

Cheesy tomato rigatoni

Thanks again to Rachael Ray, I've made a most delicious supper!  Hey, and I made a huge step.  I got rid of my cookbooks at the garage sale we had at Hertzners.  With the internet there's no need for them so much!  They take up space.  I'll always love cookbooks though.  (I love the pictures!)

So....she didn't put this in the recipe, but I fried up a pound of ground chicken and half a pound of mild italian sausage.  Cook up rigatoni, in a seperate bowl, combine ricotta, fresh parmesan, fresh mozerella finely diced, thyme, basil, salt, pepper.  Add to the cooked noodles.  On the side, saute some garlic in butter, add a can of basil plum tomatoes and crush them up.
So, to assemble, put the noodle/cheese/meat mixture in a sprayed casserole dish, pour the tomato sauce ontop, and top with a mixture of the mozerella, parmesan, and I put a little sprinkle of cheddar just because it's pretty.
YUMMMY!
Remember...if you use ground chicken, (which is super good by the way.  And good for you.) use olive oil because the chicken hardly has any fat so it tends to stick and burn!

AMAZING grilled shrimp scampi!

First of all, let's just start by telling everyone that I HATE shrimp.  I mean, I try my very best to like it, and I want to like it.  But I can't even bite into it due to that bouncy "shellfish" texture.  On that note, I made a special supper for my man tonight.  Shrimp scampi!  Not any shrimp scampi though.
Here's how it goes:

slice up half a garlic bulb and put it in olive oil and saute until the garlic is golden brown.  Transfer the oil to a bowl, reserving the garlic in a seperate little bowl.  Then add juice of 2 lemons, zest of 2 lemons, crushed red pepper flakes, and salt.  Slice up yellow squash and zucchinni and brush them with the lemon mixture.  Grill the slices for a couple of minutes.  Meanwhile, put almost all the rest of the lemon mixture in a big bag with the thawed shrimp and let it marinate at least 5 minutes.  When the squash is done, grill the shrimp.
While that's grilling, cut up the reserved garlic really small and add butter to it.  Butter baguette slices.
Take the shrimp off the grill and put in bowl with the rest of the lemon mixture.
Grill the bread for a couple of minutes.  Serve with parsley and slices of lemon.

The squash was soooo delightful!  And the bread was pretty good too.  What I loved about this dish was the clean flavors that popped.
Mike loves this more than the regular pasta shrimp scampi I've made him in the past.

Let's just say "I think I'm gettin' lucky tonight!"  (for you younger readers, please don't read that last part.)

The best tuna ever!

I put my creative juices together in my brain today.  I was sooo hungry at night since I didn't have a big supper, so I got a pouch of tuna out, the albacore white kind, and put it in a bowl with coleslaw mix, a chopped tomato, fresh shredded parmesan, chives, salt, pepper, a splash of vinegar, little bit of olive oil, quarter of a lemon of juice, chili powder, garlic powder, and fresh chopped cilantro.
I guess I love tuna now!  With all those flavors it doesn't even taste like tuna.  I guess what I hate about tuna is the tuna itself.  I'm not a fan of fishy fish so much.
Try it in a grilled corn tortilla or with Tostitos Lime and Salt thins.

SO GOOD...and good for you.

Fish tacos with watermelon salsa

I haven't cooked in awhile again...nothing adventurous anyhow!  So I found this recipe in the food network magazine.  Grilled fish with a salsa made of diced watermelon, red onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt, and pepper.  I also took coleslaw mix and put the juices from the watermelon on that.  Grill the corn tortillas, and assemble the tacos, adding sliced avacado at the end.

So I think I picked the wrong kind of fish.  The recipe called for Wild Striped Bass.  We, of course, living up here in the Northland, have no such thing.  So I thought maybe Pollock would be a good guess.  But the fish is far too soft.  It almost mimicked the texture of the watermelon, which made for a very squishy taco.  The fish was actually even mushier than the watermelon.  So I didn't love that.  Maybe another kind of fish next time.

To trying things out....