In an effort to post more often to the blog, I am going to try to write about something that interest me, food. Dinner schedules can be complicated: Anna does not have a set work schedule, I'm rarely home when she leaves, and sometimes we have hockey tickets. Ideally we also use the leftovers for our lunches too. We've discovered that its a lot easier to cook during the week when we have a plan. Every Sunday, Anna and I, sit down a create a menu and go shopping. My sister-in-law posts a sidebar on her blog with their upcoming menu. I'm not really sure what I have planned, but I don't think a sidebar is enough. Formatting will be a work in progress, assuming I do this regularly.
If you're interested in any meal, just let us know. I don't think any of our recipes are secrets.
Sunday night: Chicken, Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Pepper Pizza
We made the crust ourselves. It was a success in that it wasn't too soggy in the middle. In the past our crusts were not cooked in the center. However the crust was bland, the ends were not tasty and seemed to dry out my mouth. I'm not surprised though, we decided to make this at the last minute. We didn't have time to do a true crust, one that sits over night and goes through a bench proof. The recipe for this crust came out of the KitchenAid mixer manual. We left it for 1-2 hours to rise and thats it. We roasted a red-bell pepper ourselves, its pretty easy if you know how. The bulk of the cheese was mozzarella with blobs of goat cheese. Anna put a light coat of a marinara that advertised itself as being from Lynchburg, TN (Jack Daniels). Overall the pizza was extremely tasty. Even though the crust was lacking, you could only tell when eating the ends.
Monday night: Slow-cooker beef ribs
One of our slow-cooker cookbooks hyped up its ability to cook ribs. We've never tried until now. It may be one of the easiest slow-cooker dishes you can make, although that isn't saying much since most slow-cooker dishes are easy to put together. Essential you put the ribs in the pot, cover in bbq sauce of your choosing (we used a couple sauces that had been in our fridge and added some honey). Then you cook on low for 8+ hours. While they turned out tasty (... I may need a thesaurus) they were also very greasy. We didn't trim the fat of the ribs and it showed. Also unlike an oven, smoaker, grill where the fat can drip away, it cannot do that in the slow-cooker. Maybe it won't be so fatty with pork ribs.
Tuesday night: Ham, peas, and penne pasta caserole
We thawed out leftover chrismas ham, tossed it into our dutch oven with cooked penne, frozen peas, and a tomato-onion-creamy cheese sauce, and baked. Its your standard caserole, almost all the ingredients can be swapped with something similar, and it produces good results every time. Unfortunately I didn't get this ready until 15 minutes before Anna had to leave for work. The sauce did not sit long enough to firm up and was more soupy than intended. Oh well, still tasted great, and makes perfect leftovers.
Wednesday night: Pork, Fennel, and Roasted Red Pepper Stew.
Another slow-cooker recipe, these work really well given our schedule. Anna and I are starting to become souped/stewed out for the season. I picked this recipe because it has a completely different flavor profile than anything we've had all winter. We're not roasting the red peppers ourselves, and instead are just using the kind you can get in a jar. I'm torn, I'm excited to try something new, but at the same time I'm tired of soup/stew.
Thursday night: Hockey game, we'll probably stop at Baja Fresh or Panera.
Friday night: We're having our valentines dinner at Commerce Street Grill. I hope the place is good. I've really been wanting to try Margot's, but we found a really good deal at Commerce Street Grill. Given that we've been budeting our money, it was difficult to say no to Margots. However we're probably going to spend 1/2 to 1/4 less.
Saturday night: Nothing planned. Anna works this night so she'll be counting on me to come up with something.
Well, I'm not sure if you really cared about what we're eating, but thats really not the point. I want to write to the blog more, and I may do so by blogging about something I love and is new each week.
Brian
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