There is no way I'll ever be able to catch up on the meals we've already cooked this spring/winter blog-wise, so I'll just complete this entry, going heavy on photos of random meals we've photographed, linking to all the recipes I can find online, and then start documenting our new discoveries more closely when I'm back home again for the summer and cooking, sometime mid-August.
One of our biggest challenges is remembering what we're capable of cooking and what ideas are out there that we already know, so we don't have to spend hours "meal planning" (aka: flipping through previously flagged pages of our ten billion Everyday Food magazines / scouring cookbooks and recipe websites, deciding nothing.looks. good.because.I'm.just.too.hungry.and.need.food.now....and eventually making to-buy lists for recipes we won't want to deal with later in the week and will ultimately skip, favoring a dinner invite from a friend over cooking so-planned meals). Hopefully, this little cornucopia of photos and links will help us visualize what we've eaten and provide reference in the future.
I've included *s by our favorite meals that are now tried-and-true and bear lots of repetition in the future... and have possibly seen repetition in our kitchen so far (though they are all repeatable, unless otherwise stated).
Top row: (l-r) *Burritos with Squash & Goat Cheese (a staple in our household); French Dip crockpot Sandwiches; Whole Foods veggie skewers, quinoa/sweet potato cakes (store-bought but yum, yum, yum!), and *homemade spinach-cranberry-tomato-mushroom-candied walnut salad with Trader Joes' Champagne Pear Vinagrette dressing
2nd row: (l-r), *repeated quinoa salad & tilapia dinner with asparagus; Cooking Day with Mitra results (Mitra's lentil soup, vegetarian chili, and *sweet potato / chard / tofu scramble); and Valentine's Day sushi dinner (baja shrimp rolls, spicy tuna rolls, ebi, sake and tuna nigiri).
3rd row: (l-r) homemade pizza using Trader Joe's basil & herb pizza crust, mozzarella cheese, onions, tomatoes and pepperoni (sometimes we add portobello mushrooms instead); cheese fondue with bread & apples; ham and cheese panini & salad (thanks for the panini press, Rob!)
4th row: (l-r) *Mussels in a White Wine Sauce with lemon pasta from Pike Place Market (from NYtimes 101 meals, #5); *Couscous Salad with Black Beans, Mushrooms & Corn along with shrimp skewers marinated with lemon-garlic bottled marinade; Emeril's Chicken-Patty Pitas with corn-on-the-cob (will be even more delicious if we cook the meat a little longer).
5th row of not-particularly-repeatables: (l-r) Julia's tandori yogurt chicken (I think I need to re-check with her on the spicing) with our now-standard house salad; salmon burger from TJ's with salad (repeatable if we buy proper buns); and tomato-covered chicken with roasted veggies (veggies = good; chicken = meh).
Also, in the interest of meal documentation catch-up... other recipes / meals we liked and cooked (pretty much exclusively from our Martha Stewart Every Day Food Maganizes) include:
Roast Beef with Oven-Baked Veggies
*Israeli Couscous, Mushroom & Cranberry Salad (step 3)
*Ham-and-Sage Stuffed Chicken (Derek's favorite, go-to meal to cook)
Broiled Eggplant Slices (#20)
Baked Penne with Chicken and Sun-Dried Tomatoes (good to freeze extra portions of)
Spinach Salad with Salmon
Dutch Baby Pancakes (mmm, mmm, mmm... great weekend breakfast treat! Just make sure not to touch the pan... even after your spouse tells you not to touch the pan because they just burned themselves by touching it...)
Parmesan-Carrot Risotto (not our absolute favorite, but decent enough)
Easiest Indian Stew (not my favorite b/c of canned chickpeas, but Derek likes it)
*Kielbasa & Kidney Beans (easy, yummy one-pot meal)
Slow-Cooker Moroccan-Style Chicken & Potato Stew (easy crock-pot meal)
Grilled sausages from Whole Foods with sweet potato fries and/or a side salad
Vegetable Lasagna (using the Barilla pre-cooked lasagna noodles and substituting veggies for the meat included on the recipe on the box)
Derek's Peanut-Sauce Veggie Stir-Fry
Deviled Eggs (not a dinner, but I <3 this recipe and just want to include it while I'm listing all of this)
/ end random glimpse into our at-home eating recipes for the first half of 2010
Now... friends: your turn to share your favorite (easy, weeknight meal) recipes with us! We've tried the recipe exchange thing and none of you participated, so now it's time for you to just downright type them out and email / comment on this post or search for it on the internet and send us the link. We'll need more come fall!
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