Spicy Garbanzo Bean Burritos with Cucumber Yogurt Sauce (Splendid Table Weeknight Kitchen Newsletter from Anna Getty's Easy Green Organic)
I thought about making this for movie night, since a friend is trying to become a pescetarian. While I don't particularly find this as lifestyle that I could live, I do understand the reasoning behind it. It is oft disturbing how poorly we treat our animals. I try fairly hard to buy from local, small scale farmers, in the hopes that they do treat their animals better, which of the ones I've met, it seems like they do. I think perhaps, I will start to take this more seriously, but before doing so I'll need to get a freezer where I can store large amounts of meat to work my way through.
Anyways, this was a nice, simple delicious dish that cooked up quick and made for a nice hearty dinner.
Macaroni and Cheese with Tomatoes (p21 Cook's Country April/May 2010)
With a little change, you have a meal that's...well not good for you but probably good tasting. The thing that struck me the most about the mac and cheese is how well it bound together. Because of this I thought about making them into a fried mac and cheese, but I never got to that. So that'll probably have to happen sometime in the future. This was very good though. I like the flavor that the tomatoes added to the mac and cheese as a whole.
Penne Alla Papalina (Splendid Table Weeknight Kitchen Newsletter from Molto Gusto: Easy Italian Cooking)
Peas? La Quercia Prosciutto? Oh yes please! This was another simple dish that reminds me of why I love food so much. So simple, yet good. Hey look my library has the book...I may have to check that out.
Foolproof Chicken Cordon Bleu (p15 Cooks Country April/May 2010) with Springtime Spinach Salad (p13 Cooks Country April/May 2010)
I admit I made mistakes here. Some of the chick I cut through (doh!). The Chicken wasn't of consistant size. So they didn't often have ham, cheese and etc though the center, but over all the flavor was still nice.
The salad turned out very nice. Often times when I make dinners myself, I try to carry a theme set of ingredients through as many parts of the meal as I can. For this, the salad dressing was made, and then used to coat the croutons, cook the onions and to dress the salad. So you get this recurrent flavor of the dressing through out. It made for a good meal between the two.
Pasta with Peas, Cream, Parsley, and Mint (Bon Appétit Newsletter)
This. Was. Fast. Before I could get the water to boil, I was done with the sauce. And it was good too I like the mint and peans in the cream it made it more hearty.
Thought hat night we went to my parents where my younger brother was throwing a farewell BBQ, not grilling, but BBQ. We had pulled pork, 3 types of sauce, potato salad, coleslaw and Minty chocolate chip cookies that were all made by Joseph. Some rolls made by Jed and some brownies made by me. It was quite the spread for all the guests.
After that we spent the rest of the weekend with the Matta's. At least 3/4ths of them. We did miss Jenny, but we did enjoy the time we had with Nathan and the girls.
On the way home we debated on some dinnerware, and then decided on a nice, simple white dishes that are smaller, thinner then our previous dishes. Now it's not that I don't like the blue stoneware dishes that I've used for a good long time, however, when it comes to it I'm thinking about the look of the plating, smaller dishes in size (in a hope to get us to eat less) and maybe just a change. We bought 18 place settings (coffee cup, large and small plates, large and small bowls and 6 place settings will just go to sit in the basement as replacements), Several types and sizes and numbers of serving dishes and platters and a butter dish. After the 2nd run today, (3rd starting in a bit) most everything is cleaned and put away. The old dishes, which I don't know if I was clued in by what they had in their home or it just left an impression) will end up at the Matta's.
It was nice to get away for the weekend, if only just to break the routine a bit.