We have thrown our menu out the window because it is too hot to be heating up the kitchen by turning on the oven or the stovetop. So we opted to get take-away sushi and I made a salad with nuoc cham dressing.
We made an easy dinner tonight. John cooked the chicken in a pan and made the sauce out of packet of chicken gravy substituting Marsala wine for part of the water. I steamed the broccoli and reheated leftover rice. I just noticed that we forgot to add mushrooms to the sauce but it was good anyway.
At the end of this week we are taking a little vacation. We’ll be staying in a self-catering condo so the cooking will continue but I am not quite sure yet of what we will be cooking. So this week coming up starts out in typical fashion with Chicken Monday but fades into To Be Determined at the end. Vacation means a little more excitement in the day to day cooking so stay tuned!
Who doesn’t love taco night?! When we have tacos I set up a make your own taco bar so it is up to me to get all the condiments ready and cook the beans while John is responsible for cooking the shrimp and heating up the tortillas.
I eat my tacos tostada style with a knife and fork while John has his in true taco style. Using a knife and fork makes mine last longer. The spicy black beans consist of sautéed onions, garlic, cilantro stems, and cumin followed by a can of black beans and half of a can of Ro*tel original.
This was an enjoyable and filling meal. Having the diced avocado made it especially good!
Since this blog is all about eating healthy, losing weight, and maintaining a weight loss, I thought I would post a wrap-up of my weeknight dinners. I want to stress that all the pictures of delicious dinners are photos of my actual plate. So when I say in my tag line “It’s what I eat” I mean exactly that.
John and I saw these Incogmeato burgers made by Morningstar at the grocery store and we thought we would give them a try. They are a nice size and at 250 calories are not over-the-top fattening. John cooked it in a pan according to the instructions of 4 minutes on each side which cooked it through. The pinkness is due to vegetable and fruit juice in the mix. Did it taste like meat? Not exactly but it did not taste like your typical bean burger either. I like that the burger covers the entire area of the bun. We toasted the buns and served them with red onion and ketchup.
To go along with the burger I made a slaw from cabbage, carrots, onion, and Fresno chile with a nuoc cham dressing. Nuoc cham is a combination of fish sauce, lime juice, water, sweetener, and garlic powder. I also added a little soy sauce and a few drops of sesame oil. It made a tasty slaw.
Would we eat this plant-based burger again? John is a maybe and I am more interested in trying a different brand to see if something else will taste more like a hamburger. I also like veggie burgers that taste like vegetables so I might go that route if I am looking for an alternative to meat. In any case this was a really simple dinner to make and that may play a role in our decision-making in the future.
Since I knew that the amount of pasta we were preparing would not fill us up, I made a large salad for each of us. I think I have mentioned many times before that I do not really like salad much especially I have to make it myself. In fact John mentioned last night that a good salad is one that someone else makes. But our salads were bright and colorful with lots of additional items. They were the perfect addition to our meal.
Our main course was whole grain penne with the pesto I had made a few weeks before. It seemed none the worse for wear from being in the freezer for a couple of weeks. John added some additional cheese and oil to his and I garnished mine with some torn basil leaves. It was delicious!
A couple of times when we have been out to dinner we have ordered some fish that was in a Peruvian ceviche of tiger’s milk. Tiger’s milk is a spicy lime marinade which if you make it according to the recipe uses raw fish in the preparation of the sauce. The lime juice and chiles are added to a blender along with the raw fish (and a couple of other things) and zapped until smooth. The whole concoction is then passed through a sieve.
We did not make ours that way. We used some clam juice for the fish component which made it thinner. Then we kept adding stuff like sesame oil, fish sauce, and some sweetener until it tasted similar to what we expecting. John seared the tuna first and then we let it sit in the tiger’s milk for 10 minutes so the fish firmed up some. It was not exactly like our restaurant food but it was pretty good.
I made a salad of edamame, corn, tomatoes, and basil with a little oil, a few drops of sesame oil, and red wine vinegar. It turned out well. John also made some rice to go along with the rest of the dinner.
We both enjoyed our experiment and it did not heat up the kitchen much. I think we will continue to work on the tiger’s milk but having a new preparation for fish is a great!
Chicken thighs were on the Monday menu and John did a great job grilling them. He made a hot and a less hot side of the grill and cooked the thighs the majority of the time on the cooler side. At the end of cooking he basted them with barbecue sauce and switched the thighs to the hot side insuring grill marks and char.
For my part I microwaved the potatoes and then handed them off to John so he could get some grill flavor on them. I also cooked the broccoli which was mostly about getting the timing right so the vegetable was ready when the chicken came off the grill.
It was a beautiful evening here in Northern California and very pleasant for sitting outside on the patio with a glass of wine while the chicken cooked. I am going to have to put more grilling into the menu so we can enjoy these lovely nights.
In my endless quest to find something different to make on Breakfast For Dinner Sunday, I came up with a Mexican inspired egg dish. I started out without a complete thought and just kept adding ingredients to my sauté pan. Then I put the whole gemisch on top of my warmed tortilla. After I had all the toppings made I cooked my egg and crowned my concoction.
This turned out pretty good. It would have been better if the salsa was at room temperature instead of cold since it chilled the dish a lot. John made his every Sunday omelet but added some harissa in a shocking deviation from his usual ham, cheese, mushrooms, and scallion omelet.
Omnivore 