Note: to create a vegan or vegetarian dish omit Parmesan cheese.
This yummy vegetable and legume creation comes together in about a half an hour if you are a fast chopper. I tend to start the onions cooking while I am chopping up the rest of the veg. Here’s the recipe –
Not only is this tasty and super healthy but it is so attractive! Taking pictures of vegetable dishes is way easier than trying to make a hunk of meat look good.
It has been just about a month since we had this dinner. Not only is it delicious but healthy too! Plus the calorie count is pretty low. So, win, win, win!
John as usual cooked the shrimp perfectly while simultaneously charring the corn tortillas over an open flame. I made the mango salsa with the spicy tomato part of a can of Rotel and a ripe mango. The spicy black beans were cooked in the juice from the can of Rotel and further spiced up with cumin and chipotle powder.
Not shown were our before-sies, guacamole and tortilla chips and a margarita. You can’t be perfect all the time!
Most of the time I am pretty good at following my menu for the week and eating in a pretty healthy way. But sometimes, especially on a Sunday night, I just want a break. And so enters the ever-so-convenient pizza delivery.
I have eaten a lot a pizza in my life. After all I am a girl from the Jersey shore originally. I know what good pizza is and have eaten my share of the good stuff in Italy. In fact last year I made a whole calendar up featuring pizza we have eaten on our trips. On the first of the month we would try to guess what kind of pizza and where we ate it.
California pizza on the whole is not spectacular. Somehow the pizzerias don’t get that it is all about the crust. But when I am I in the mood for pizza and I know that a pizza will almost magically appear at my doorstep in about 45 minutes, I throw good intentions aside and go for it. My favorite is sausage pizza.
A while ago we bought a package of three NY strip steaks for $6.99/lb. Unfortunately unlike the two others in the package this steak was a little tough. John cooked it to a perfect medium rare and I paired it with a grilled baked potato and a combo of broccoli and cauliflower. It was still a good dinner but it could have been great.
When I saw this recipe calling for whole fish and all its fussiness I knew there was a way to make the dish easier. I pulled out a couple of frozen tilapia, defrosted them, and John and I made the best tilapia dish ever. John cooked the fish for about 10 minutes at 450F after first adding the citrus juices, orange zest, salt pepper, turmeric, and sumac. It came out delicious!
We served the fish with simply steamed white rice, orange and lime pieces, and a zesty herb, kale, and Romaine salad dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. After this dinner it will be hard to convince me to eat tilapia any other way.
Below is the original recipe with a whole fish. You can make it with a filet of white fish for an easier preparation.
SUMAC FISH
I think every time we have this dinner I say to John, I wish I could have another hamburger! They are so good! Tonight the little char on the bun was the perfect complement to the medium rare burger. A little mayo, ketchup, and sliced onion made my hamburger complete.
Tonight, instead of buying an expensive prepared salad I shredded some cabbage, thinly sliced part of an onion, and grated a carrot and made my own coleslaw dressed with a combination of light mayo, Dijon mustard, and cider vinegar as well as salt and pepper. If you like sweet slaw you could add sugar. John sprinkled his portion with celery seed. It was a fine dinner for a hot August night.
This is our second dinner made from the rotisserie chicken I bought at Costco. Now that we have used both breasts, the rest of the chicken will be used for lunches, solo dinners, and chicken stock.
We used instant mashed potatoes to keep from heating up the kitchen. Surprisingly John really likes these potatoes. I prefer my regular preparation of peeling, boiling, and mashing the potatoes with some milk and butter but I am willing to take this short cut. I wouldn’t use them for Thanksgiving dinner but instant mashed potatoes for a ho-hum weeknight dinner is fine.
I cooked the broccoli in lemon juice and butter and it turned some of the florets yellow. It must have been some chemical reaction between the broccoli and the acidic lemon juice. I will not do that again!
This is a tangy hot weather salad. I adapted it from a much more complicated recipe. Using rotisserie chicken, a mini-prep processor, a box grater, and a zoodler made this dish much easier.
Vietnamese Chicken and Rice Noodle Salad
Omnivore 