Just the facts!
SUNDAY
Grilled pizza sandwiches
These are not only delicious, easy to make, and filling, but they are cheaper than making pizza, especially if you use pre-made dough when you make pizza. I find that I use about half the amount of cheese and sauce as I do to make pizza for the same number of people.
We made these with cheese, pepperoni, and some bottled pesto. Spread the outsides of the sandwich with butter mixed with garlic powder and oregano
a promising start to any recipe
and on the inside, spread sauce on each slice of bread, then add a handful of cheese, and whatever filling you like. Then put it together and grill as you would normal grilled cheese sandwich. I like to grill them until they’re golden on the outside, then put them in a warm oven for a bit, to make sure they’re cooked all the way through, because they are pretty thick.
This recipe works well with sturdier bread, like sourdough or something. Or, if you are using softer bread, just make sure the butter is nice and soft, using whatever kitchen tools you have on hand, like a potato masher or an elephant
Hey, I didn’t kill anybody this week. Where’s my medal?
MONDAY
Chicken pesto pasta
Poach chicken breast, then dice or shred it. Cook and drain a bunch of pasta (farfalle/bowtie/butterfly pasta is good for chunky recipes like this. We used penne, because it was what we had, and it was fine), mix it with the chicken, and add in a bunch of pesto*, a bunch of crushed fresh garlic, and a ton of grated parmesan cheese. Add salt and pepper. Serve hot or cold.
*I didn’t even make pesto, I just chopped up a bunch of fresh basil and mixed it with olive oil. Pretty yummy. Better the second day.
This really needed a side dish, but I went to lie down instead.
TUESDAY
Meatloaf, acorn squash
I’m the only one in my house who thinks this is funny.
What they don’t realize is that it takes all my effort to resist making a nice perky set of Double D meatloaves.
Our meatloaf recipe: good old Fannie Farmer. As she says, this recipe is “susceptible to many variations.”
Acorn squash! So seasonal! My usual recipe is to buy it, put it on the counter, look at it guiltily a few times a day for a few weeks, notice someone has stabbed it with a screwdriver and there is now something squirmy living inside, and throw it in the swamp out back; but here’s the technique we used this time, and it was much more popular:
Cut squash in half, scoop out seeds and pulp, put them face down on a pan and bake at 350 for half an hour. Turn them over, but a blob of butter and brown sugar in each one, and put them back in the oven for another half hour. Tasty.
I feel like we had something else, too, but I forget what.
WEDNESDAY
English muffins, scrambled eggs, hostages, some elderly cantaloupe, quinoa
Definitely a low point of the week, food-wise. English muffins undertoasted, eggs burned, sausages are fine because how the hell do you screw up frozen sausages, cantaloupe dessicated and improperly peeled, and the quinoa, well . . . I bought this pre-flavored, pre-vegetabled quinoa and it turned out looking like something that nobody wants because nobody needs. And it was expensive!
Quinwhat?
THURSDAY
Tacos de Carnitas
Boy, I had really high hopes for this recipe, which I got from the NYT; and it smelled fantastic as it was cooking. TO BE FAIR, I was missing a lot of the ingredients. I think it’s worth making again when I have more stuff on hand, because pork is still cheap; but I was expecting this dish to redeem the entire week, and it did not do that.
It didn’t help that I didn’t fry up the meat nearly long enough after it was shredded, and I think that’s not cilantro. I think that’s parsley. Also, I forgot that corn tortillas are bloody awful when you don’t fry them. Boo.
FRIDAY
Fish sticks, rice, raw broccoli and sweet peppers
The “raw broccoli and sweet pepper” part is the voice of optimism speaking. But I do feel like I can heat up some frozen fish sticks, and probably strong-arm some teenager into making a pot of rice.
In conclusion, this week can eat my poo. Did I say that last week? Well, still.
I’m struggling a bit with InLinkz. I paid the little fee so that entry thumbnails would be displayed at the bottom of the page, but I think you still had to click through last time. Grr. Here’s hoping it works this week. Anyway, I hope you join in! Anything you want to say about food, here’s the place.
