Braised Prime Rib
Slowly cooked meat is a new favorite at our house. However, not many days lend themselves to hours of prepping and cooking food. Over the long Fourth of July weekend, a combination of unplanned events lent themselves to a day with nothing to do but shop and cook. With a day such as this, braised meat was sure to be on our menu.
Making the short trip to our favorite butcher (which honestly is the only decent one within 30 minutes of our home) we were searching for beef shanks. Having braised lamb shanks recently, we wanted to try our hands…
Uniquely Spiced Pork Chops
Sometimes a weekend can provide a nice assortment of enjoyable moments. Take this past Saturday for example. With only one child at home in the morning, we started the day by getting a few small work projects done, while our daughter proudly made breakfast. After retrieving our son from an overnight stay, we headed to the mall for some shopping. The next stop was the grocery store, at which the four of us planned that night’s dinner. During the afternoon the kids hung out with friends while my husband and I took a walk and worked on dinner. An enjoyable…
Coconut Shrimp
When I was planning the week’s menu, I asked the kids for some input. Our 13 year old son requested shellfish for dinner one night. However, he wasn’t certain how he would want it prepared. With a week of rain and cool temperatures forecast, I suggested soup. That wasn’t quite what he had in mind. My next suggestion was coconut shrimp, and that sounded perfect to him.
I had made coconut chicken tenders a couple months ago, and the recipe was a hit. They were easy to make and had a decent amount of crunch even though they were baked instead…
Steak au Poivre
As I was thinking about dinners for this week, I knew that I wanted one of the dishes to include steak. With a multi-day stretch of rain forecast, grilling was a less desirable option. Panfrying the steaks seemed like a simple way to make dinner on an evening that was most likely to be filled with taking children to and from practices.
Although panfrying on its own would have been okay, I wanted to make a dinner with a bit more flavor. Searching through my cookbooks, I found several different recipes for Steak au Poivre. This dish seemed to have a…
Italian Stuffed Chicken
My husband and I cook differently. He tends to choose his ingredients in a more spontaneous manner, while I make a plan of what I will use. I prefer to measure ingredients, and he likes to approximate. He adds many spices to dishes, while I choose one or two to flavor my creation.
Nonetheless, or maybe because of our different approaches, we work together well while cooking. However, this past Sunday I merely was a spectator, as it was Mother’s Day. While I didn’t want to give the appearance that I was being a critic, I wanted to watch him make…
Pork Pinwheels
As mentioned in the previous post, Saturday was an afternoon of grocery shopping and cooking for my husband and me. While I worked on the Pineapple-Mango Chutney, he was busy creating a pork dish.
Keeping with our plan for finger foods to be eaten at an indoor picnic, we decided that this dish should be able to be eaten in the same manner. Our actual intention was to make a lamb dish, but the store didn’t have any cuts that would have worked well. (I guess being the day before Easter, we should have figured that lamb would be in…
Barbecue Chicken Pizza
Homemade pizza is a family favorite at our house. Last Friday night, my brother’s family was planning on stopping by for a visit, so we asked them to join us for dinner. Trying to consider the food preferences of kids ranging in age from 21 months to almost 13 years old, pizza sounded like the winner.
For the kids and my finicky “little” brother, we made a few plain and pepperoni pizzas. However, for the more adventurous eaters we made Barbecue Chicken Pizza. This pizza is packed with flavor but is extremely easy to make. To make the recipe even easier…
Pork & Tofu Stirfry
The diverse range of foods that our children like and dislike amazes me. There are some foods that typically aren’t kid favorites, that some of our kids like, such as sushi, crab, and brussel sprouts. Then there are foods that many kids like that aren’t enjoyed by all of ours, like oatmeal, blueberries, and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Of course, with four kids you get more diversity. Even with that in mind, every once in a while one of the four surprises me with a request for a certain food. A few weeks ago, the surprise factor was attributed to our 11…
CATMO Soup
This weekend we had a request for homemade chicken noodle soup. While it holds little appeal for myself or my husband, it is a favorite for three of our four children. As we hadn’t made this simple soup in quite a while, I didn’t feel the need to have the kids choose a more creative soup.
However, that didn’t mean that my husband and I needed to eat this same soup. I planned on making homemade broth on Sunday morning, which could be divided between two pots to make two different chicken-based soups.
In the past, we have used chicken broth as…
Chicken Florentine
On a recent Saturday, the kids were tired from a late Friday night. So, rather than eating dinner together, we made an early kid dinner and put them to bed a little before 8. After they went to bed, we had a nice quiet, candlelit dinner for two.
As chicken and spinach were our dinner ingredients, they worked well for both meals. The kids were pleased to have grilled chicken breasts and a “no thank you” serving of spinach. (In our house, that is a petite serving, enough so that you are sampling but not enough to feel torturous for the…
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