A Girl's Gotta Eat!

Last week I tried a new recipe from my Cooking Light cookbook that I was extremely excited about and had very high hopes for: Chicken with Rosemary Sauce. I had everything on hand except the chicken, so I picked that up Thursday and decided to try it out for Friday's feast. The recipe was easy, healthy, and didn't call for too make ingredients, a seemingly perfect combo. But when all was said and done, and it was time to sit down and eat, it left me … unsatisfied. The flavors worked well enough, and the chicken was moist and all, but it just didn't live up to the expectations I had set for myself. So then I faced a dilemma: throw away perfectly fine leftovers, which is wasteful and ridiculous, or eat them, wishing all the while that I was eating something else. After a couple days of putting off the inevitable, it struck me. I could use the original recipe, jazz it up with my own flair, and have a delicious meal (hopefully) that was satisfying and avoided w...

This is a preemptive post in light of the impending weather coming to Middle Tennessee in the coming days as well as an effort on my part to plan out meals with a little more, well...planning. I have found several recipes I really want to try over the past several days, but the idea of the healthy, hearty Smoked Sausage Cassoulet warming in the Crock Pot all day won first place as the one to try first. I think it will last a couple days in the fridge, as my guess is that I won't feel like getting out in 7-degree temps to go grocery shopping! The link above will take you to the recipe as well but here's a sneak peek of what I hope mine will look like and the ingredients needed in case you want to follow along at home on this one. I'll post again with the how-to and my photo after I get it together. 2 slices bacon 2 cups chopped onion s 1 teaspoon dried...

It's that time of year again when the veggies start rolling in faster than we can eat them. (Thanks, Delvin Farms !) We recently got a couple of huge, beautiful eggplant that we knew needed to be used sooner rather than later, so last night I fired up Pinterest to see what I could see. There were several recipes in contention, but ultimately we went with Eggplant Steaks. (Technically the recipe was for Eggplant Stakes, but I decided not to hold that against the pinner.) The recipe was super easy and super quick. We ended up broiling the eggplant in 2 batches, as it was too much to fit all in one pan. Otherwise, we made it exactly as directed and served it with wild mushroom couscous and dinner rolls with German honey spread. Even for two meat-eaters like Mike and I, it was delicious and absolutely filling. We've already packed up the leftovers for lunches tomorrow!   Eggplant Steak  2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons thick steak sauce (we used Lea ...

  Have you ever come across a recipe in a book or magazine, or perhaps an idea on Pinterest, that once you see it, you think, "Duh! This is brilliant and easy. Why didn't I ever think of it?"   Several months ago, Mike and I had such an experience when we saw a recipe in our Food Network Magazine for, wait for it....Tomato Orzo Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons .   Seriously? How many of us grew up eating Campbell's tomato soup alongside a grilled cheese sandwich, dipping the sandwich into the bowl or mug of hot orangish liquid?   ( Side note: growing up, my mom called the soup "orange soup" for YEARS, as none of my siblings nor myself liked tomatoes. I guess none of us ever looked at the label or noticed that it had a distinctly non-tomato flavor. A fond memory nonetheless.)   Anyway...we knew we had to try this. I'm happy to say it was fantastic! While it may be tempting to push the "easy button" and open up that fail-sa...

Here’s another quickie that I’m sure you’ll be glad to have on hand. Mike and I still have a fair amount of Alaskan fish in our freezer from Mike’s trip there last year. As we need to be finishing it, we’ve been looking for a variety of recipes to keep dinner interesting as well as tasty. The recipe we most recently used is definitely going to be one of my go-to recipes in the future. It uses ingredients I (almost) always have on hand, it was tasty, and we think relatively healthy. The only thing we didn’t have this time was onion, so I sprinkled the fish fillet with onion powder before spreading the mayonnaise mixture over it. We usually have shallots on hand, which I think would add a little bit of color to an otherwise very monochromatic dish. Speaking of it being monochromatic, while this is some of the tastiest, moistest fish I’ve made in a while, it’s not overly pretty. If you’re making it for guests, think about garnishing it with a sprig of parsley, and/or using red on...

Remember yesterday’s fish leftovers? I was brainstorming as I was driving home from work today, trying to decided how to reheat the fish so it wouldn’t dry out when two words came to mind: Fish Tacos. We already had everything we needed: the fish, salsa verde, queso fresco, and some extra fresh cilantro. I stopped on the way home to grab some corn tortillas and a bag of coleslaw mix, just the dry shredded cabbage/carrot blend without dressing. (I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t seem right to me to have fish or shrimp tacos on flour torillas, which we had at home.) This is how we made ours: First, I set out the cod and salsa verde to start to come to room temperature. Then the coleslaw…I mixed up some mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, onion powder, garlic powder, seasoned salt, and a sprinkle of cumin for the coleslaw dressing. Everything was done to taste, so there’s no recipe I used and really no way to go wrong. We like our coleslaw moistened with dressing, not swimming in it, so ...

Mike has a PT test at work in a couple weeks and has sworn of red meat while he prepares. (I have made no such pledge.) As such, we decided to that some the fish he caught on his trip to Alaska , figuring we could figure out how to cook it for dinner when the time came. As it happened, I saw the  recipe on the Today show's site  in the afternoon of the day we planned on having it for dinner. How convenient! I did discover that we had actually thawed cod instead of halibut, but it was a white fish from Alaska , so we both figured it would work just as well. Because we had a preportioned amount of cod ready to use which was closer to 2 pounds than one, we opted to double the recipe for the salsa verde. There was also a recipe for asparagus to have as a side dish, but we opted for corn on the cob instead since we already had some at home. This was super-easy and pretty quick to whip up…excellent for a weeknight meal. The fish was moist, cooked-through but certainly not overcook...

Nothing much to say about this recipe other than it was easy, tasty, and made an excellent weeknight meal. We came across it in our much-used copy of Recipes Worth Sharing while making Shrimp and Grits for my MIL's birthday dinner. It looked tasty, and we have salmon in the freezer from Mike's Alaska trip and most of the other ingredients on hand, so it was perfect! The most "difficult" part was cooking and flaking the salmon, but there are a few things you could do for that. 1) Buy smoked salmon. It's more expensive, but easier to flake and you'll save time cooking it. It will impart a stronger flavor, but I think it would be good in the cream cheese-based sauce. We even talked about smoking our own salmon next time and trying it. I'll post an update when we do. 2) Grill salmon for dinner one night and purposely make enough extra to make this pasta a few days later. It will be cool enough that flaking it will be a breeze, and you save a little time no...

There have been so many recipes in our recent issues of Food Network Magazine that have been calling our name that we've been hard-pressed to choose which one to try first. When we finally narrowed it down, we were quite pleased with the results. We had been looking for a meal that seemed fairly quick and easy to execute and that was relatively good for us. This flank steak seemed hearty, but was listed in the magazine as having less than 400 calories per serving. Even better, flank steak is a relatively inexpensive cut of meat, and this one didn't need hours marinating before we could cook it. This definitely fit the bill. The steak stayed juicy and flavorful since you sear it. We cooked our for the suggested time per side for medium-rare, but as long as you sear it over high heat, cooking it longer for a more well-done steak shouldn't pose a problem. There are two things I would do differently next time. 1) Double the recipe for the beans. We thought they were excepti...