John sliced up one of the breasts from our Costco chicken and heated it up slowly in chicken gravy. I reheated some rice made earlier in the day and sautéed asparagus and mushrooms.
Easy dinner.
On Monday morning I got up early to beat the heat and made stuffed peppers. Since I only had 8 ounces of beef I extended my stuffing with chopped onions, bell pepper, and mushrooms along with leftover rice from our take-out Chinese food last week. I had 4 red bell peppers and one small yellow pepper so I used the red peppers for the main dish and the yellow pepper chopped up in the filling. I also had a little of Rao’s basil and tomato sauce left which I extended with Muir Glen tomato sauce.
First I divided each pepper in half and microwaved them for four minutes to slightly soften them. Then I browned the ground beef and skimmed the fat off. Adding the vegetables was next and I cooked them with the meat until the onion was translucent. After adding the tomato sauce I popped the peppers in a 350F oven for 40 minutes.
At dinner we microwaved our peppers one at a time with a little more tomato sauce. They were so good that we decided to eat them again the next night!
This is my favorite Sunday egg dinner. It is so easy to make and hits what I like about food – crunchy and salty elements. I lay down a layer of tortilla chips, maybe 10 or 12. Next I mix some canned black beans with salsa and add that on top. I scrambled the egg for the next layer making sure to keep it very soft because it is going to get a bit more cooking. Finally I put some cheese on top and microwave the whole thing for a minute or so. It is tasty and fun to eat!
After a horrible week of temperatures over 100F and very little cooking I am going to post a menu for this week in the hopes that we will actually be able to use the stove and oven.
Since we missed celebrating Rosh Hashanah due to making soup and bread in 100+ degree weather was a non-starter, we will have our traditional dinner before sundown on Friday. And since we are moving holidays around we will have our non-traditional taco Thanksgiving on Saturday at our son’s house.
This is my first time making shrimp fajitas and they turned out really well. I cooked the peppers and onions first with half of the spice blend and then John cooked the shrimp with the other half. Then we mixed them together and served it with corn tortillas that John had seared over the stove.
I got the recipe from healthyfitnessmeals.com. Here’s a link.
I have not been writing my blog this week due to not really cooking. It has been so hot, over 100F!, all week. We have been eating take-out and leftovers from lunches out all week. Last night we waited until after it was almost dark to grill the steak and potatoes. It is unfair to ask John to stand over a hot grill in the blazing sun. We still have three more days of extremely hot temperatures but I think we are just going to turn on the air conditioning and cook, electric bill be damned.
Anyway we had the flank steak on Friday and although it turned out a little less rare than we normally like it was tasty and went well with the grilled Russet potatoes and steamed broccoli.
This started out as a sheet pan recipe.
However, it is 99F outside and we are trying to keep the house cool so we changed it to a pan-fry cook and also decided to use raw kale instead of cooked spinach.
I have eaten gnocchi two times before this and have been unimpressed. This third time I was also unimpressed. Give me potatoes or give me pasta. Don’t try to mush them together! This just seemed like a heavy, sauceless plate of food. I think John liked it though. He ate the leftovers for lunch. So maybe it’s just me.
This is a new recipe for us. We saw Sunny Anderson make something similar on The Kitchen and thought we would give it a try. Here is her recipe. https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sunny-anderson/sunnys-easy-rice-and-lamb-stuffed-peppers-16716844.amp
I par-cooked the peppers, drained the lamb fat, and added some tomato sauce to mine. I also used the yogurt as a garnish rather than a sauce.
My negatives are that it was a bit greasy and the lamb flavor was lost. I guess I like my regular ground beef, rice, and tomato sauce better.
As often happens I get tired of cooking at the end of the week. So I decide to push the gnocchi dish into next week. The gnocchi is shelf stable and onions, kale, and mushrooms will last a while longer.
So I use up the rest of the linguine in the package, pour out the remainder of the frozen meatballs, open a jar of Rao’s tomato and basil sauce, and voila! dinner. I do put a little of my own spin on the sauce with red pepper flakes, garlic powder, and oregano.
It turns out really yummy. Now I wonder if I will bother making my own spaghetti sauce or meatballs in the future!
When I was a teenager I remember my father grilling steaks on Saturday night. We each got a steak and we all looked forward to it. At our house we are not giving out one steak per person but John’s excellent grilling job means that we usually eat as much as is grilled.
Along with the steak I prepared sweet potatoes to be finished off on the grill, steamed asparagus, and a tomato salad with Boursin cheese balls.
Our plates were very colorful and appealing. The food was outstanding.
Omnivore 