Week 7: Italian Week

Recipes to Go: 507 445

Weeks to Go: 52 45

Recipes Made This Week:

Creamy Baked Macaroni

Microwave Lasagna

Meatball Calzones

Chocolate-Hazelnut Brownie Bites

Sugared Peanuts

Pull-Apart Bacon Bread

Salmon with Spinach Sauce

This was the first week that The Husband has lamented that he won't be able to eat something again for a whole year. And it was this, the Creamy Baked Macaroni.

This is what mac 'n' cheese should always be. It was so easy. The recipe said 20 mins. to put together and 25 to cook, but we were eating a little over 35 mins from when I started. And I almost didn't have leftovers for The Husband's lunch, but I managed to control myself. Apparently, lunch time the next day was when The Husband realized that he might not enjoy the deliciousness again for awhile. So this is ending up on my go-to meal list.

Microwave Lasagna made me nervous. I was a bit worried about cooking everything in the microwave, but the comment in the recipe was right, you would never know from the taste. This lasagna was wonderful. And I was lucky that my microwave can fit a 11x13" pan and still rotate since I didn't have the slightly smaller pan the recipe called for. This is a great recipe for those ridiculously hot summer days where the thought of turning on the stove sends you into heat stroke. My kitchen stayed cool, but my dinner was hot. And delicious. Sorry, no picture, but if you've seen a lasagna before, than you know what this looked like.

The meatball calzones were yummy because I used the leftover meat from the Cabbage Rolls, our favorite recipe thus far, to make meatballs that I used in this. I think it might have been easier to put the whole thing together if I had stuck my pie crust in the refrigerator for awhile

first, but it still tasted great, even if it looks odd.

That's why you get two pictures. Cause it looks more tasty here:

There was a deal at one of our grocery stores last week where you got a free jar of peanuts if you bought two coke products that were on sale. So we thought we could use some carbonation to help us get rid of our excess of ice cream using the float method. While this helped a little, it didn't help that they were out of peanuts at the store. So being my mother's child, I asked for a rain check. I went this week to get my free peanuts and it's a good thing I got my rain check from the person I did because they put up a little stink about it as I was checking out. Don't worry, I got my peanuts and used them for this:

I'm not a fan of peanuts, so I didn't actually taste this, but I was told they were tasty. People at Game Night seemed to like them.

I also made Chocolate-Hazelnut Brownie Bites, only I had to use walnuts instead of hazelnuts. The Nutella as the frosting covered that up pretty well, I think.

These were a little too nutty for my taste, but they were good. And now I might make them without the nuts and just use the Nutella as frosting, cause that's a genius idea.

Saturday morning we made Pull-Apart Bacon Bread. I don't have a sufficient sized pan, so I baked two batches. Which worked well as breakfast on Sunday.

Man, how does bacon just make everything better? And I never would have put mozzarella with bacon, but this was a great combination and very filling. It was breakfast and lunch for two days.

Our last experience with salmon was very fishy, so I was hesitant to use the rest of the fillets, but I won't any more with this recipe. It was supposed to be cooked in a pressure cooker, but I just baked it in a tent and it was so moist and tender. And the spinach sauce was like a relish and a nice complement to the lemon of the fish.

I think all my future fishes might be cooked this way. Lemon pepper, lemon slices, and go. Yum.