Our Kung Pao shrimp turned out great! We followed a recipe by Jet Tila which you can find here-https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kung-pao-shrimp-7112947 The cooking goes really quickly so it is important to have your mise en place ready when you begin cooking. Although there were just the three of us eating we made the entire sauce part of the recipe but only used 18 of the 21-25 shrimp. I would not have wanted less sauce. I think next time we are going to try the recipe with tofu.
This is one of my favorite meals that Sarah makes. She uses spicy Italian sausage with various shapes of pasta and usually kale. It is so good! Yum!
After a few weeks without buying a Costco chicken we succumbed to its low-priced convenience and bought one. It is such a good deal—still only $4.99 for a rotisserie cooked, good-sized chicken. Sarah took it apart separating the dark meat from the breasts and saving the skin and bones for cracklings and stock. I shredded one of the breasts which yielded enough meat for 13 enchiladas and I have the other breast for classic chicken later in the week.
We made a casserole dish of the charred tortillas stuffed with shredded chicken, onions, cheese, and enchilada sauce and topped it with additional enchilada sauce, onions, and cheese. It cooked for about 40 minutes in a 400F oven. The three of us ate most of them but John still has two left over for lunch.
I had a lazy cooking night with Rao’s spaghetti sauce, Barilla spaghetti, and Rosina meatballs. It tasted great and there were no complaints.
Other than these Nathan’s hot dogs being too skinny and my over-seasoning the beans with chipotle powder, this was an all-American dinner. The hot dogs were advertised as spicy which they were not. They were also “bun length” which made the tubes of all-beef meat skinnier. Between the bun and the condiments it was hard to find the dog! However they were on sale for $2.50 so I guess I was willing to overlook their skinny selves when I bought them.
I boiled the hot dogs and warmed up the beans on the stove with a can of Rotel, cumin, and too much chipotle powder. I fancied up the canned sauerkraut with some sauteed onions and garlic, caraway seeds, and a dash of sugar. John toasted the buns in the oven. It was a summertime kind of meal which fits in with the weird weather we have been experiencing. The temperature’s high yesterday was 83. What is going on? We are in the second week of November!
Although Sunday is supposed to be breakfast for dinner night I was just not feeling like it. Instead I boiled up 3 ounces of thin spaghetti and drained it by putting the spinach in the bottom of the colander and pouring the spaghetti and the hot water over it. Then I mixed it up in a bowl with some olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Seriously, I could eat a dinner like this every night.
Now that John has the green light to eat what he wants again he chose meatloaf. I have not made meatloaf in a long time except for dabbling in trying to make it with oatmeal once last year. Saturday’s meatloaf turned out kind of tough. I used my mom’s method for making it—ground beef, an egg, some breadcrumbs, onion, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and garlic powder. It just did not turn out quite right. Sigh. I think I will email my sisters to get the proportions right. All in all it was just an okay dinner.
Usually I am just so-so when it comes to salmon but last night’s was really, really good. We went to Costco and bought a package of six really nice pieces. We would have three for tonight and freeze the other three. It worked out that the salmon cost about $10 for our dinner. This was Atlantic farm-raised salmon and I know that a lot of people think that it is inferior to wild caught but this salmon that John cooked in the oven for 12 minutes was silky and delicious.
John made some rice and I cooked the broccoli and made the mustard sauce. It was an outstanding dinner!
Recently Sarah got a 2-Good-2-Go surprise bag from Eataly, an Italian gourmet market. Among other things a package of six Merguez sausages was included. She looked through recipes and found one that we had all the ingredients for and made it for our dinner on Thursday. It was delicious!
Merguez is a spicy lamb sausage which is hard to find in grocery stores. I am wondering if we can make it again using a more readily available (and much cheaper) sausage. Here’s a link to the recipe she used.
Omnivore 