Shrimp street tacos and salmon summer rolls. 1/22/23

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Beebamom

Shrimp street tacos

I am always trying to find items which will not blow my food budget when we are on a road trip. Although these tacos came with chips (which I gave away to my dining partners), shrimp and corn tortillas are always a good choice. I wish they had not squirted the pink stuff on top but otherwise this lunch was pretty good. We are so happy that Tia’s in St. George, Utah seems to be prospering especially since most restaurants in the area are closed on Sundays and we were hungry!

After we got to our destination and checked into our condo for the week, we headed to the grocery store for supplies. Sushi was the easy dinner for Sunday night. When you have been on the road driving all day the idea of making a complicated dinner was a non-starter. I chose salmon summer rolls. We raised our glasses of Negroni sbagliato and wished each other a very happy vacation.

Salmon summer roll picture thanks to tastykitchen.com
Posted in Dining out, Easy, Fish, Japanese, Mexican, pescatarian, Shellfish, Vacation cuisine, Vegetables | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Hamburger and salad. 1/20/23

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Beebamom
Hamburger and salad

Tonight we enjoyed a hamburger which John cooked beautifully on the grill. If I could only choose one way to eat beef it would be this, a simple burger with a slice of onion on a bun with a smear of mayo on the bottom and ketchup on top. The salad was good too!

Posted in American, Beef, Easy, Salad, Vegetables, Weeknight dinners | Tagged | 1 Comment

Thai basil eggplant with tofu. 1/19/23

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Beebamom
Thai basil eggplant with tofu over rice

This dish is our attempt to recreate our favorite dish from a local Thai restaurant. It ended up as kind of a Thai-Vietnamese mash-up which was good but a little too salty. We made nuoc cham, a Vietnamese sauce whose main ingredient is fish sauce. John marinated the tofu in it and we poured it over the whole dish towards the end of cooking. It was a bit much on the salt level and not quite the right taste.

Obviously Thai basil eggplant is a work in progress. If we ever get it right, I will post a recipe. If any of you have a recipe, I would love to try it.

Posted in Asian, rice, Thai, Vegetables, Vietnamese, Weeknight dinners | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Noodles and Zoodles with peanut sauce. 1/18/23

Posted on January 19, 2023 by Beebamom
Noodles and Zoodles in peanut sauce

This is the first time I have made this recipe and I am pretty happy with how it turned out. Further down the page is the recipe I started with. I changed the soba noodles to 6 oz. of fettuccine and one medium zucchini spiralized. I made the full amount of sauce because we love sauce but just the amount of vegetables for two people. The recipe calls for PB2 which is peanut butter powder. Peanut butter powder has much fewer calories than using full fat peanut butter. So by reducing the fat calories and having lots of vegetables by using zoodles we ended up with a healthy dish.

Since this is a photo of the recipe the links are not live.

Posted in Asian, Healthy tips, Pasta, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Weeknight dinners | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Classic chicken dinner, 1/16/23 and Open-faced tilapia sandwich with salad, 1/17/23

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Beebamom

Apparently I forgot to post yesterday so today is a two-fer.

Rotisserie chicken and butternut squash/potato mash with gravy and broccoli

My classic chicken dinner is always served with butternut squash, rutabaga, or potato mash. Sometimes, like Monday night, it is a combination because I don’t have enough of any one thing. I cooked the butternut squash and potatoes in the Instant Pot for 15 minutes and they always come out totally mashable. They are so tender that I can mash them with a fork easily.

The chicken comes from a Costco rotisserie chicken. We have decided it is such a good deal ($4.99!) that we will always buy one when we go to Costco. Once home I take the chicken apart for use during the next few days and I even make chicken stock out of the carcass. Yum, chicken vegetable soup! I think I will have it for lunch today.

Broccoli is always the vegetable of choice for Classic Chicken Dinner. We also made gravy from a packet of chicken gravy mix by McCormack.

Open-faced tilapia sandwich with tartar sauce and a salad

John and I enjoy the mild taste of tilapia for our open-faced sandwich. While John cooks the fish I make a tartar sauce from mayo, relish, capers, yellow mustard, grated onion, a squeeze of lemon, and a squirt of sriracha. The bread component is an Artesano sausage roll that I toasted. For salad tonight I used a Taylor Farms pre-packaged chopped steakhouse wedge that comes with croutons, bacon bits, and a blue cheese dressing. Easy, tasty dinner!

Posted in Easy, Fish, Instant Pot, Poultry, Salad, Vegetables, Weeknight dinners | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Breakfast for Dinner 1/15/23

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Beebamom
Soft scrambled eggs, veggie breakfast sausage, rye toast

This is my iconic Breakfast for Dinner plate. No bells and whistles, it is just straightforward eggs, toast and a plant-based sausage patty. Along with a hot cup of tea this dinner is the perfect easy meal to end my week.

Posted in American, Breakfast For Dinner (BFD), Easy, Eggs, Vegetarian | Leave a comment

Weekly Menu. January 16-22, 2023

Posted on January 15, 2023 by Beebamom

This week is abbreviated by a little vacation. John and I will be heading to Utah and taking our son on his birthday trip. There is nothing he likes better than to spend a week playing tennis and golf. One thing that he and I have always done together is to plan, shop for, and cook meals. He is a pretty good cook although a little on the messy side. Having a rental where he can cook and I do not have to stress over the mess is ideal!

I bought a Costco rotisserie chicken today and took all the meal off for use in our roast chicken dinner on Monday and for lunches during the week. I have even made stock with the carcass. On Wednesday I am hoping we will follow through and make the noodles and zoodles with peanut sauce that we were supposed to have done last week.

I will probably be a little less DiningLite on vacation but I will try to post whatever reasonable meals we make.

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Turkey enchiladas with spicy beans. 1/14/23

Posted on January 15, 2023 by Beebamom
Turkey enchiladas with spicy beans

The plan originally was to make chicken enchiladas. I thought I had two packs of rotisserie chicken in the freezer but I did not. While pulling out everything in the freezer looking for the chicken we came across two frozen turkey thighs which must have been frozen a long time ago. We defrosted them in the microwave, roasted them in the oven, and finally I shredded the meat so we could make turkey enchiladas! It was more work than I had bargained for but the turkey enchiladas turned out pretty tasty.

I warmed corn tortillas in the oven and then filled each tortilla with a combination of pulled turkey meat, diced onion, shredded cheese, and salsa verde. In a 350F oven I baked my twelve tortillas in a 9×13 dish that had a layer of salsa verde in the bottom, followed by the tortillas, and then more salsa verde, the onions that were left, and some cheese. After 30 minutes they were heated through with the cheese melted on top.

The spicy beans were simply a combination of pinto and black beans plus a can of Rotel. I tried a new version of Rotel that is made with Serrano chiles instead of jalapeños. We all appreciated the extra spice.

Between the three of us we ate eight of the enchiladas and most of the beans. I figure that the four remaining enchiladas will make a nice lunch for John and our daughter or a dinner for John and me if I get tired of cooking in the coming week!

Posted in American, Legumes, Methods, Mexican, Poultry, Southwest U.S., Vegetables, Weeknight dinners | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Noodles and zoodles with spicy tomato sauce. 1/13/23

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Beebamom
Noodles and zoodles with spicy tomato sauce

On our menu this week we were supposed to be having noodles and zoodles with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce dish was just more trouble than I felt like going to so I switched the sauce to the spicy tomato sauce that I had made earlier in the week. I made zucchini spirals (zoodles) with my handy Vegetti and the zoodles really bulked up our servings of fettucine.

It was nice to have a fairly simple dinner. I will make the peanut sauce some other time.

Posted in Easy, Italian, leftovers, Pasta, Vegan, Vegetables, Vegetarian, Weeknight dinners | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lightened clam chowder and salad. 1/12/23

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Beebamom
Lightened clam chowder

When I first saw this recipe I thought yes, I would like to make clam chowder but no, I cannot use three cups of heavy cream! So I went about trying to lighten it up. First I jettisoned the guanciale, upped the potatoes a bit, and cut out the three cups of heavy cream. Sometimes I make it with 2tablespoons of heavy cream but last night I used a cup of half and half. I think I like it better with the heavy cream. You can use however much your own personal taste and requirements allow. Using part of the potatoes as russet potatoes instead of all waxy potatoes gives it a creamier texture as well. In the recipe the soup is served over a big slab of bread. We opted for oyster crackers instead.

The salad was simply a bagged product. It said it had a Dijon dressing. It was so sweet that we ended up putting a lot more mustard in. I have noticed that most of the pre-packaged salads come with really sweet dressings. Certainly it would be easier for people to add more sweetness if they wanted it than find ways to make the dressings less sweet. (This is a pet peeve of mine!)

Here’s my recipe for lighter clam chowder.

Posted in American, Healthy tips, Kitchen tips, Methods, pescatarian, Recipes, Shellfish, soup, Vegetables | Tagged | Leave a comment