Week 30: Making up for lost time

Recipes to Go: 507 211

Weeks to Go: 52 22

Recipes Made This Week

Creamy Vegetable Bow Tie Toss

Brownie Sundaes

Sweet 'n' Salty Popcorn

Saucy Apricot Chicken

Shrimp Pasta Salad

Chocolate Braids

Bean Quesadillas

Meatless Mexican Lasagna

Barbecued Meatballs

Pecan Vegetable-Rice Medley

Turkey Potpies

Caramel-Coated Spiced Nuts

Tiramisu Brownies

Strawberry Marscapone Crepes

Hot Cocoa

Prosciutto Tortellini

As you can see scrolling down forever to get to this, I made up for some weak weeks this week. In January I just couldn't seem to make 10 recipes a week. This is mostly due to the fact that I'm pregnant with baby #2 and was most sick this time than last. But clearly the worst is over, so I took advantage of feeling good for more than one day in a row.

On Sunday I made the Creamy Vegetable Bow-Tie Toss. I had been planning on making this for awhile, so I already had the ingredients ready. It was fast, and pretty much what I've come to expect from a cream sauce pasta recipe.

I also really wanted some homemade brownies, and we had some slightly freezer-burned ice cream in the freezer, so I made the Brownie Sundaes.

The brownie portion was disappointing. It definitely needed the ice cream to help. Sadly, the ice cream wasn't that great either, so I'm still on the lookout for some yummy brownies in the book.

Because I was disappointed, I decided to make some popcorn and watch a movie with the fam. We did this all the time on Sundays growing up. Since I don't have an air popper (The Husband says we'll probably get one, and it'll probably be after I'm done with all this), I used microwave. The recipe was delicious and highly addictive, but the aftertaste was weird. It felt like my mouth was coated with a dry, flavorless film. Since The Husband experienced it too, I blame the microwave, pre-buttered popcorn.

The "Meals-in-Minutes" section is not joking. I will definitely be looking here when the year is over and I need something fast for dinner. These recipes mostly use cans that I'm planning on keeping stalked up in the pantry. This one got great reviews from The Husband. It was fast, easy and delicious. What more could you ask for?

I love a good pasta salad, so a shrimp pasta salad was right up my alley. And it lived up to expectations. I guess between recipes like this and the gumbo I'm going to have to keep shrimp in the freezer.

I made the Chocolate Braids for my class. After commenting that they looked like elephant poop, they ate the whole thing. I guess that's not a deterrent to teenagers.

Though I can't say it stopped me either. This wasn't overly chocolatey, it just tasted like a yeast bread with cocoa in it. Which is not to imply that it wasn't good.

I had been wanted to try the Bean Quesadillas every time I passed them in the book, so I finally got around to it. Why don't I ever think of quesadillas when I'm out of dinner ideas?

We go to burritos so often, you'd think I'd figured it out by now. Anyway, these were delicious, like all quesadillas are.

Sticking with the Mexican theme, I made the Meatless Mexican Lasagna. I've made this at least twice before, but not this year, so I was kind of getting it out of the way.

I'm not a huge fan of corn tortillas, but in this instance they work.

Again, the meatballs are something I've had my eye on doing for awhile. For some reason, I thought they were more work than they were. I guess I assumed they'd be in the slow cooker, since most of the other meatballs I've made have been. But they were easy, as far as rolling raw beef goes, and they were tasty.

They went very nicely with the pecan veggie rice. The rice spiced up nicely with just a little fresh parsley. Who knew? And even without the pecans the veggies were delicious. There was very little put in to flavor them, either. This was definitely a light meal that tasted fresh and light rather than low-fat and bland.

My last potpies suffered from a case of bad-smelling thyme, so luckily for me this one didn't call for thyme at all. (Though I did replace my thyme, for the record.) This recipe made two pies, so one to freeze for later. It even came with freezing and thawing instructions, conveniently. And if all my childhood potpies could have crusts like this, I would have wanted to eat them much more often.

Game Night got two treats this week because I thought we'd have someone coming who didn't like chocolate. So I made the spicy nuts. And thanks to my poor mixing skills, they were very spicy. Well, technically some were very spicy and some not spicy at all.

And they were outshown by the tiramisu brownies. Because, well it's tiramisu. And brownies. The only problem was that I couldn't find any marscapone, not even for ready money. So I used a substitute (thank you Internet). The frustrating thing was the recipe called to make it in layers (tiramisu) and marble things around with a knife. Sadly, the density of the layers was vastly different making this impossible. So we stirred it all together. These ended up very cakey, which I normally don't look for in a brownie, but they were also very rich, so they made up for it. They were very good.

I used up the rest of the fake marscapone the next morning with the crepes. They were yummy, as one would expect with crepes, strawberries, and crepes.

But they didn't make very good leftovers.

It was cold enough on Saturday to let me finally make the hot chocolate. It was very rich thanks to the almond extract, but not chocolatey enough for The Husband's taste.

For a fast dinner that night, I made the proscutto tortellini.

It was fast and delicious, but not cheap. Mmm, but did I mention it was delicious?

Week 29: Alone Again

Recipes to Go: 507 227

Weeks to Go: 52 23

Recipes Made This Week

Super Sausage Dip

Turkey and Squash Lasagna

Sweet-and-Sour Brussels Sprouts

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Curried Carrot Soup

Chicken Pot Pie

So while The Husband was away, there was a small crisis at work, which required extra hours from everyone. For convenience, The Husband volunteered for the night shift. It was only supposed to be for a few days, but ended up being pretty much all week. So, essentially, I was alone again. As you can see, this greatly diminished my ambition to cook.

Since I knew that lunch would essentially become breakfast and dinner, I made the sausage dip for lunch on Tuesday. It was good, but not tomato based like I was expecting, so it was not as yummy as I thought it would be.

Yet somehow, it was very addictive, I just had to wait 10 minutes or so between eating fests.

Since I was feeding the missionaries that night, I made turkey and squash lasagna. This was only half as yummy as it could have been, since I somehow missed spaghetti squash in my shopping list and couldn't find any in the local stores. I think the squash would be a great flavor. Not that you can ever really go wrong with lasagna.

It kept us in leftovers for most of the week. And it just kept getting better, as is usually the case in my lasagna experience.

To go with the lasagna, I made brussels sprouts. I can only recall trying brussels sprouts once in my childhood and it was a bitter experience. Just taste-bud wise, it didn't make me resent my mother or anything. But I remember thinking all the rumors and jokes were true, brussels sprouts were horrible. And I decided I didn't like them.

I will now officially redact that statement and say that clearly I just didn't have the right recipe, because now I have tried two that were equally wonderful. I actually found myself craving these all week long.

For dessert I made the pumpkin cupcakes. I had wanted to make these last week, but didn't, obviously. With the pineapple in them, they had a unique taste, more like apple cake than pumpkin cupcakes. And they really needed the frosting, which isn't always the case with cupcakes. Oh, and they stuck to the liners something horrible. I haven't ever had a problem with that before.

But don't let all this talk convince you that they aren't delicious, because they are. And pretty darn healthy, considering.

It's a little sad that I got more than half my cooking for the week done in one day, but that's how it goes sometimes, I guess. It didn't help that I didn't have class Wednesday through Friday, either. Everyone slept in, except The Captain, and our schedules were all over the place. However, we still needed a quick dinner on Wednesday since The Husband went into work earlier in the day so he could lead the church youth activity that night and still get his hours in. So I made the Curried Carrot Soup.

Last time I made a creamy soup, it seemed a little weird to The Husband, but this got rave reviews and inquiries into the ease of construction, which usually means he would like it to be a staple when the year is out. This was a pretty easy recipe, and so perfectly spicy that I won't have a problem making it again.

By Thursday, they had moved The Husband's work schedule from 12 hours at night, to 8 hours ending at 11. So it was slightly more normal and The Captain learned that Daddy hadn't moved away or disappeared. We didn't have Game Night on Friday since I had a meeting and The Husband was working. Saturday, by some miracle, The Husband didn't have to go into work, so I made a chicken pot pie after a family trip to the grocery store. It's been a really long time since we've done that. This is a recipe I feel deserves another chance, since the only problem we had with it was my thyme, which tasted moldy. Unfortunately, that was the base of the gravy, so the whole pie tasted somewhat moldy. Not the pie's fault.

Week 28: All By Myself

Recipes to Go: 507 233

Weeks to Go: 52 24

Recipes Made This Week

Beef Barley Soup

Ezekiel Bread

Veggie Tuna Burgers

Caramelized Onion-Gorgonzola Pizza

Pecan Lemon Loaf

Reuben Crescent Bake

Broccoli with Lemon Sauce

Chocolate Party Cake

The Husband left on a business trip Sunday afternoon, so The Captain and I were by ourselves all week. Sunday night some friends were kind enough to invite us over for dinner. I agreed on the condition that we could bring some of our leftovers with us. They accepted. For dinner, they had beef soup. They wanted to make beef barley soup, but couldn't find any barley. I brought my barley salad, which in addition to being convenient, started a conversation about where to find barley in the few stores in our county.

The soup was so delicious, I decided to make my own beef barley soup the next day. It was also delicious. But because I had quick-cooking barley instead of regular, I only put it in for the last few minutes. Despite this, it still managed to suck up all the moisture in the soup. So I added water and salt to each serving. It was still marvelous. I didn't mind eating all the leftovers myself.

On Monday I also made Ezekiel Bread. (So named for a passage in the book of Ezekiel, which mentions the joy of sweet wheat bread.) It was sweet, and used mainly wheat flour. I halved the recipe because it still made 2 loaves and I only have 2 bread pans.

It was so delicious. It made excellent toast which supplied The Captain and me with breakfast all week. And sandwiches, and snacks . . . And we had a crusty heal leftover to feed the ducks with.

The veggie tuna burgers were on my list for last week, but we didn't get to them. So I tried them on our own. They were tasty, but The Captain was too skeptical to eat a tuna patty. I bet older kids who don't take their burgers apart to eat them would enjoy the taste and get plenty of veggies in them in the process.

Thursday, I made the Caramelized Onion-Gorgonzola Pizza. I haven't tried Gorgonzola cheese in anything other than my favorite soup from now-out-of-business *sniff sniff* Big City Soup --Tomato Gorgonzola. It is almost essentially blue cheese. Wasn't expecting that.

And I can't say I was a huge fan of it on my pizza. Everything else on the pizza will end up in future Pizza Night (first Sunday of the month) homemade gourmet specialties, though. Man, does anything beat caramelized onions?

Additionally, I managed to make a Pecan Lemon Loaf for my early morning class, which was, of course cancelled. Apparently there is some causality between me making a treat and snow storms.

That was disappointing since now The Captain and I had to eat the whole thing, and he's not supposed to eat many nuts right now. I did let him try it. He enjoyed it and didn't have any allergic reaction to the pecans. Good sign.

The Husband came home on Saturday. His birthday was on Friday, which meant a depressing evening alone in a hotel room for him. Too make up for that sadness, we moved Game Night to Saturday and I made him one of his favorite things, a reuben sandwich. Okay, the Reuben Crescent Bake wasn't exactly a reuben, and I had my doubts about using crescent rolls, but apparently the only difference between crescent rolls and rye bread is caraway seeds. They duplicated the taste surprisingly well. This was delicious. We all wanted leftovers and were sad it got eaten so fast.

I made the Broccoli with Lemon Sauce to go with the Reuben Bake, but something went wrong with the lemon sauce. Too much lemon juice, or something, because it just didn't taste good. Oh well.

And for dessert, chocolate cake. He wouldn't be my husband without his deep and abiding love of chocolate cake. And so it wouldn't be his birthday without it. I almost hated to experiment with a new recipe in case it just wasn't very good and ruined his birthday twice, but I needn't have worried. This was delicious.

Unfortunately, it did boil over in the oven, so the house smelled like burnt chocolate for Game Night. After tasting the cake, no one mentioned the smell.

So, only 8 recipes this week, but not bad for being on my own, I say. Especially since there really weren't that many leftovers to deal with when it was all over.