Day Seventy-three--Chana Masala

I know, I know. I've been slacking, not lazy, just slacking. We made a spur of the moment decision to drive over to NY Sunday afternoon. It was mostly because we couldn't figure out what to have for dinner and Tim's mom had called earlier and invited us over for a bbq over there. We spent the afternoon outside in the little blowup pool in the backyard and then we debated about what we wanted to have for the 4th. Nobody wanted to venture to the store and deal with the holiday crowds so at 4:3o we just piled everyone into the car and drove three hours.

We had some pretty amazing food waiting for us though. I wish I had thought to take a picture but honestly, we were so hungry that taking a picture was an afterthought. For food we had steamed clams (in a wine sauce), burgers, hot dogs, sweet potato salad, coleslaw, pasta salad, a corn salad, cider baked beans, and I'm pretty sure there was other stuff too. It was delicious. It was washed down with some of Ed's home brew. The beer was pretty good too. It was all enjoyed on the back deck and thankfully the temps had cooled from the 99 it was when we were out in the yard.

We came home Monday afternoon and because I still hadn't been food shopping and we were tired (and slightly lazy) we stopped at Wegmans and picked up subs for dinner. Tuesday night we were back on track. I had some chick peas in the cupboard so I made some channa masala. I made it in the afternoon so when Tim got home I could run and do food shopping before he left for aikido.

Chana Masala

This is a favorite go-to dinner for us. It's easy to make and it's full of flavor. If I'm careful with how much red pepper flakes I put in it then Aidan will eat it too. We ate this on top of brown rice and there was enough left over for Tim to take a big container of it to work with him and I have a container for my lunch too. Yay.

The rest of the week should be good. I'm kind of excited for tonight's dinner. I'm trying something new and I hope it works out. We're moving our pizza night up one night because Friday night we head to NY again for the weekend. I'll be sure to take pictures this time. =) Until later, stay cool!

Day Fifty-six--Greek Salad

I'm back! I'm late in writing, but I'm back. We got home late Sunday night and yesterday I just didn't have a chance to get to the computer. The weekend was a lot of fun. It was nice to get away and not have to think about anything that needed to be done. We went to a fair with Laurie and the boys each won prizes. We ate Renna's pizza. We watched Alice in Wonderland. It was a lot of fun.

We didn't eat the best while we were out. We caught fast food (ICK) on the way there on Friday night because I was not organized. It was interesting because while I ate it, I had serious issues with eating it this time. I almost didn't eat it but was feeling woozy and knew I needed to eat something. I kind of miss the days where diners were along the road and you had the chance to eat real food while traveling. We actually decided that next time we go over to see Laurie we are going to stay off the interstate and enjoy the back roads.

Yesterday I was able to get to the store and go food shopping for the first time in a couple of weeks. It's nice to have a menu planned out and everything I need ready to go. Last nights dinner was a much needed dinner and it tasted so good.

We had:

Greek Salad

It was romaine lettuce, red onion, green pepper, kalamata olives, cucumber, tomato and feta cheese. Tim made the dressing while I was cutting up all the veggies. The dressing was awesome and we've elected Tim to the official post of salad dressing maker. The dressing was just olive oil, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, garlic and oregano.

The salad was perfect after a weekend of eating what we consider junk now. It's funny how my thinking has shifted with food. I was telling Tim that as good as Renna's pizza was...and it is the best as far as I'm concerned, the salad tasted better. It was cool. It was crisp. The dressing was flavorful. We had it with a loaf of ciabatta bread and three of the four of us enjoyed it. Aidan wouldn't touch the salad. Connor ate a ton of it. Last time I made Greek salad he wasn't too impressed with it but this time he ate it and loved it.

So, it's good to be home. It's good to be back to my routine and I look forward to this week. I hope everyone is doing fine and enjoying this beautiful weather we are finally having!

Day Forty-five--Mediterranean Salad

Hello all. I hope everyone survived the holiday weekend. I think I'm still trying to recover from Hershey Park on Friday. I've had a headache since Friday night. Of course, I didn't help my cause with the several bottles of beer on Sunday night. Magic Hat's summer brew is the best!

Yesterday was Monday and we did a meatless Monday. I keep getting updates from Food, Inc on my facebook page about Meatless Monday and I thought, "What the hell?" We do a lot of meatless dinners. Sometime I'll go back and figure the percentage of vegetarian. We were vegan for a year, so we have a pretty good arsenal of vegetarian meals to use. This salad was from the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution book. It was super duper easy!

Mediterranean Salad with fresh bread

I like how Jamie just chops everything on a big board and dresses it on the board. It makes the salad into little bite size pieces. Laurie (hi mom) does this too. It makes the salad easier to eat. I made a fresh loaf of bread to have with the salad. I don't think you really need a recipe for this salad, but I followed it mostly. It's romaine lettuce, an onion, a tomato, and some kalamata olives. The recipe called for basil too, but our basil plant needs to renew itself a bit so I didn't pull any leaves off of it. It's then dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. The bread was super delicious and we ended up making salad sandwiches. Connor came up with this one. It was a nice light dinner after a long weekend of indulging.

That is all I have for now. We are going to try to bust through the last of our school projects today and then I have to make pasta for tonight. It's going to be a busy day. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Forty-three--Beet Green Salad

This is going to be a quick post. It's late and we have to get up early tomorrow morning to head to Hershey Park. Tonight's dinner was interesting. It was insanely easy to put together. Well, let's just get to it:

Beet Green Salad with Goat Cheese

I loved this salad. I was the only one who loved this salad. I roasted the beets and then peeled and sliced them. Connor was stealing the beets faster than I could cut them. I then took all of the beet greens and washed and chopped them up. I put the greens in a bowl and then sliced a half of a red onion and chunked up some goat cheese. The dressing was just olive oil, balsamic vinegar, chopped garlic and some mustard. At this point, I put the chopped beets into the salad too. I then dressed the salad and this is where I lost Connor. He told me I ruined his beets.

Like I said, I loved this salad. The dressing was so flavorful. The greens were so crunchy and delicious. I have never had goat cheese before and I was a little creeped out by the texture of it. It had a pretty good flavor though. Now, as for the rest of the family. I wish I had taken a picture of Tim while he was eating it. It appears that he doesn't like beets. He was making the funniest faces and had the kids giggling. Aidan got a big plate of the salad and had a bite of it and just couldn't eat anymore. I suppose I won't be making this salad again. I did have both kids ask me to make pickled beets and eggs again. I guess I'll take that.

Busy day tomorrow. I'm not sure what we'll be doing for dinner. I suspect we will still be at Hershey Park. It should be fun though. Until later, well, you know. =)

Day Forty-two--Mexican Quinoa Salad

So, remember yesterday I was saying how hot it was. Compared to today, yesterday was as cool as a cucumber. What happened to spring? Crazy. Dinner tonight was an easy one again. It did involve the stove but only for 15 minutes or so.

Mexican Quinoa Salad

First, let me just say that I also made this:

Fresh salsa with organic tortilla chips

And after my day, I was glad to have a cold beer to go with the whole shebang.

The salad. I'm not sure what I was thinking with this one. I guess I saw Mexican and that was enough for me. I did have my doubts about the quinoa. I'm not a big fan of quinoa. I've tried to like it, really I have. I knew I was in trouble when I was mixing the spices into the quinoa to cook. The recipe called for cinnamon and nutmeg with cayenne. It smelled horrid. The other things that went into the salad were good. Tomatoes, an avocado, black beans, corn and feta cheese. I should have just left it with that and not added the quinoa. Ick. It was gross. The kids both took a big "no thank you" bite, and both shuddered. I can't blame them. I took a couple of bites and gagged.

Thankfully, I had also made a huge batch of fresh salsa. I'm going to be eating salsa for the next couple of days with the amount I made. It was delicious. It was spicy and I think I might have used a little too much cilantro but it was good. Connor, Tim and I enjoyed the salsa. It was too spicy for Aidan.

So, to sum up. This salad was awful. I will NOT be making it again. I'll spare you the recipe. Trust me, it wasn't good. Tomorrow will be another salad. It should be interesting though because we have to leave at 6 to go see a live TV show being taped at our PBS station. I guess we are going to try to eat before hand. It will be rushed. I just hope it will be better than this one was. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Forty-one--Pasta House Salad

Whew, it was hot yesterday and I'm glad that I planned accordingly. No stoves or ovens were used. I did finally have to run to the store to get some food and that was the extent of me dealing with the heat.

Dinner was a salad. This salad has been around for a while and I had to go do some digging around to find the recipe.

Pasta House Salad

I remember this salad from my childhood. My mom's friend had sent it to her and my mom made it a lot. I had the recipe written down at some point, but with so many moves it has gotten misplaced. I was going to call my mom to get the recipe again but it's not easy getting in touch with her anymore so I resorted to the good 'ol internet. Seriously, how did we survive before the world wide web?! I was able to find the recipe and figure out where this recipe came from. The Pasta House is a series of restaurants in the St. Louis area. This makes sense to me because that is where our friend lives.

The salad itself is crazy easy to make. It's a mixture of romaine and iceburg lettuce. I like to chop it up into small pieces. Then there are a couple of jars of artichokes (that I chopped up a little), some pimentos and a sliced red onion. It seems I can't find jars of pimentos anymore. I had to get a jar of roasted red peppers and slice them up. Tim made the dressing for me while I was doing all the chopping. The dressing is just olive oil, red wine vinegar, and some salt and pepper. You pour the dressing over the salad and then grate fresh Parmesan cheese over the top.

Tim and I loved the salad. The kids, not so much. Actually, the kids hated it. I have warned them though that they better get used to salads or they are going to be really hungry. I'm kind of looking forward to tonight's salad too. It should be interesting. I just hope the kids like it. Until tonight(or tomorrow morning), happy cooking!

Day Thirty-five--Pasta with Vodka Sauce

My oh my, dinner was fabulous tonight. I made fresh pasta from scratch and then I made some homemade Vodka sauce. Tim and I love some vodka sauce.

Pasta with Vodka Sauce

Last week when I was making out the menu for this week, I started procrastinating. I know, I am classic for this. I got to thinking about a blog that my mom used to read and I glanced at it once in a while, but never gave it much thought. For some reason I wandered over there to see what was going on and lo and behold, she had a bunch of recipes online. They looked fabulous so I grabbed three of the recipes for my menu this week. Here is the recipe for the sauce. It was really easy to make. The worst part was when I inhaled the steaming vodka after I put it in the pan. Can we say pass out? Whew.

While the sauce was cooking, I rolled out the pasta and cut it into strips. I made a mistake this time. I thought that since I was going to cook it within a half hour that I didn't need to hang it up to dry. I put all of the little strips into a bowl until it was ready to boil up. Big mistake! We ran out to vote in our primary and came home (10 minutes tops) and by the time we got home it was all stuck together. I peeled some of it apart, but me being the impatient person that I am, ended up just throwing the wad of pasta into the salted water and used a pasta spoon to separate it a little bit. It ended up being ok. Aidan actually said that his favorite pieces of pasta were the big chunks. Everyone loved the vodka sauce. In the past, when we've gotten the jar of vodka sauce, the kids haven't like the flavor. This one they both loved. Connor was funny because he thought he was going to get drunk eating the vodka sauce.

I think that is all I have for now. I'm trying to keep track of the primary results, watch Biggest Loser and blog at the same time. Not very smart on my part. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Thirty-four-- Chana Masala

We had dinner later last night that we usually do. Chalk it up to poor planning and brown rice. Connor had his karate class so while he and Tim were at karate, I ran down and used our treadmill for 30 minutes. By the time I came upstairs I only had 15 minutes before they got home. I immediately put on the brown rice because it takes so long to cook. The chana masala came together pretty quickly.

Chana Masala

This was a request from Tim. He loves this stuff. I have to admit it is pretty tasty. Plus, it used up pretty much the rest of the spinach that I had so we didn't waste it. My only problem was that the brown rice took FOREVER to cook. It worked out in the end though because Connor came home with a pretty low blood sugar from karate and we had to treat that before he could eat. Somehow, it all came together and we were eating by 8.

I love this recipe. It's really easy to make and it has so much flavor to it. I cut back on the red pepper flakes these days because of Aidan. He actually ate a bowl full of it and said he liked it.

Well, I was up at 5:40 this morning (probably because I was asleep at 8:30 last night) and now that I have this post done I am going to treat Patchy to a nice morning river front walk. I'm looking forward to tonight's dinner. I'm making something new and I hope it turns out. Until tonight (or tomorrow morning), Happy cooking!

Day Thirty--Fritatta

Hello all. Another great day around here. I'm happy that we have gone 30 days with our mission. Last night's dinner was an easy dinner. It's one that we have had many times and it was funny because the whole time it was cooking, Connor kept cruising through and asking, "Is dinner ready yet?!" I guess he really likes this:


Potato and Spinach Fritatta

We had a bit of a mess up in the beginning, but fixed it. I've been using our cast iron skillet almost daily and I thought I would be able to use it for this. Wrong. The first thing you do for this recipe is cook the sliced potatoes with some olive oil. The potatoes were sticking like crazy. We ended up switching over to a non stick skillet. Then all was smooth sailing. The potatoes cooked and then I added the spinach and a clove of garlic. Once the spinach was wilted, I added the eggs and a sprinkling of grated cheddar. Then you cover it and let it cook for a few minutes. What could be easier? ! It was delicious and everyone ate it...even Aidan. He said that the spinach was actually good. There was one piece leftover and Connor wrapped it up and put it away, claiming it as his.

I don't usually post desserts because we don't usually have one. If we do have a dessert, it will be a scoop of amazing ice cream from our dairy on top of a simple cone. Tonight, I'm posting it because it was so good. Today I had to run to the farm to get more milk and eggs. I have been eyeballing the yogurt in the case thinking to myself that I should be eating yogurt because it's good for me. I hate yogurt. I try to eat it but end up gagging on it. I finally broke down and picked up a container of it. I got vanilla. I brought it home and cracked it open and took one tentative taste, expecting to put it in my fridge and then sit until it goes bad. I was so shocked at how this tasted that I made everyone have a spoonful of it. It was so amazing. Instead of having a snot like consistency it was smooth and the taste was incredible. The yogurt came from a dairy in Williamsport, the Toy Cow Creamery. I tried to look them up on the Internet but it appears they don't have a website. I did see that they sell raw milk though and I'm thinking that next time we are in the Williamsport area I might have to try some of that. I wish our dairy would sell raw milk, but I'll take the hormone free, grass fed, pastured raised cow milk that they do offer. Ok, getting off topic...back to dessert. I had a cup of organic strawberries and used some of the yogurt to dip the berries into. Then Aidan wanted a bowl of yogurt and Connor wanted a bowl of strawberries to himself. Slow changes and we are starting to see the boys not beg for the usual crap of cakes and cookies and be satisfied with fruit and yogurt.

Berries and yogurt.

I have to give a shout out to the amazing person who made my berry bowl too. I've ordered a couple of her pottery pieces so far. She lives in Memphis and sells at the Memphis Farmer's Market and has an Etsy shop. She made me a custom order honey pot that gets used every day now that we are trying to cut the sugar out. You can find her at Bridgman Pottery on Etsy. Thanks Melissa!

Ok, that is all for now. Tonight is our pizza/movie night. I have to run out and get our cheese for said pizzas and I think I'm going to pick up Artisan Breads in 5 Minutes a Day. Until tonight, or tomorrow morning, happy cooking!

Day Twenty-Eight--Black Beans and Rice

Gonna be a short post tonight. It's been a long day and I'm beat. In continuing with our "eat out of the cupboards" this week we had black beans and rice. This is a really easy dish to do. It's my mother's recipe and I love it.


Black Beans and Rice

At first I freaked out because I realized I had used my last onion last night in the spanakopita. Then I remembered I had like 3 separate containers in the refrigerator that had halves on onions in them. I dug them out and chopped them up and fried them up in olive oil. Along with the onion was garlic and a green pepper. Once they were all soft, I added cumin and chili powder and then two cans of black beans. Then they simmer while the rice cooks. Speaking of rice, I'm in trouble for a dinner later in the week. I ran out of rice with this meal and need it for one more meal this week. I am hoping that somewhere in the depths of my cupboard I might have a bag of brown rice somewhere. I usually buy big bags of basmati rice at our Indian market, but it's all gone now. If I can't find rice, I'm going to have to get creative with my meal. I guess you'll have to wait and see what happens.

So, the beans were served over rice. I shredded a tiny bit of cheese that I picked up at the dairy over the weekend. It's from a local farm. It's a softer cheese than I'm used to and had a really mild flavor. I'm used to cheeses that have flavor that almost bite back. This cheese was good on top of the beans though. Tim likes to put sriracha sauce on top of his for a little heat. This was an eight thumbs up meal. Everyone ate it and there were little leftovers for tomorrow. Good thing I made bread today so we can have sammies.

I think that is all I have for now. Until tomorrow, happy cooking.

Day Twenty-seven--Spanakopita

Hello all. I'm posting the day after again. Sorry. Last nights dinner was delish. I made an old favorite of ours. I made it basically because I had phyllo dough in the freezer, I had eggs and onions and garlic. All I had to buy for this dish was spinach (in season) and some ricotta cheese. I am going to use the rest of the ricotta for something else this week.

Spanakopita

This is an easy meal. I whipped it up while Connor was at karate. Basically, you saute some onions and garlic in some olive oil. Once they are soft, you add a ton of spinach and let it wilt down. While the spinach is wilting, you mix together a couple of eggs, ricotta and feta. I had some feta left over from last week. When the spinach is done wilting you add that mixture to the cheese mixture. Then comes the fun part, at least for Aidan. You layer a few layers of phyllo dough, brushing each layer with olive oil. This was Aidan's job and he did it fabulously. Then you pour the cheese/spinach mixture into the layers of dough and repeat a few layers on top. Throw it in the oven for 30 minutes and you have yourself a pretty tasty and light dinner. It made five servings and Connor was quick to claim the fifth piece for his lunch for today. He even packaged it up and put it away himself. Three out of four of us liked this. Aidan liked the crust and he picked at the cheese mixture, but it had too much spinach for his liking. He did eat some of it though, so I'm happy.

Day Twenty-three--Greek Salad

Sorry that I'm posting a day late. I was beat after dinner last night. Actually, I was in bed most of the day yesterday because I felt pretty darn crappy. I'm pleased that I was still able to get out of bed and make dinner. I have Tim to thank for help though. He went out and got a loaf of ciabatta bread and toasted it up for croûtons.


Greek salad

This dinner was tasty! I wasn't sure how it was going to taste as I was putting it together. This recipe (do you really need a recipe for a salad?!) was from my Jamie Oliver 20Minute Meal app. It was several stages and I kept asking Tim "But when does the lettuce come into play?" The dressing was olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper and oregano. He also says to slice a red onion and pour a splash of red wine vinegar over the slices for a little bit. This made the onions taste fantastic. The only thing I didn't like, and will leave out next time, are the avocados. It called for 2 avocados and I only used one and I didn't feel like it went well with the salad. The lettuce and onions and everything were crisp and crunchy and then I would get a bite of avocado and nearly gag. I've made another salad of his with avocado in and loved it...just not this one.

The kids didn't really like this recipe. Connor and Aidan ate the croûtons, and a couple of bites of the lettuce but they really didn't like it. Tim and I really enjoyed it. It was nice to have something really light for a change. Tim was also joking that we had Mexican on Cinco de Mayo and that we were having Greek salad to commemorate the collapse of the Greek financial status. He's a riot, no?

Well, I hope I'm able to get more accomplished today. I am going to go start a loaf of bread and I need to start pizza dough this afternoon for tonight's dinner. I'll try and post tonight. Until then, happy cooking!

Day Seventeen--Channa Masala

I was back in the kitchen tonight and it was an easy one tonight. I pulled an oldie but goodie out from our vegan days. The good 'ol chana masala.

Chana Masala on top of coconut rice.

This is a super easy dinner to make. I used organic chick peas and spinach. I fry the onions up in a little bit of peanut oil and when the onions start to caramelize, I put in some garlic and garam masala powder and ketchup. The original recipe called for tomato paste and I never have paste in the house. Out of desperation one time I used ketchup and it was good. I was happy that I have just replaced our old ketchup with organic ketchup. Once that cooks for a bit, I then add some chickpeas and a bit of coconut milk (the rest of the can of milk goes into making the rice) and some red pepper flakes. I didn't use as many red pepper flakes as I used to because I wanted Aidan to eat it. After it's salted and peppered I put in a whole bunch of spinach. Then it just simmers until the rice is done.

We haven't had this for a while so it tasted so good. Connor said he didn't like it before he even ate it but we suggested he try it anyway and he ended up wanting a second bowl of it. He does this every time we make this. I don't if it's because he doesn't like the smell of it when it's cooking or how it looks, but he always ends up eating it and loving it. Aidan ate it and said he loved it and said he could have handled it a little spicier. He's so funny. Maybe next time I can ramp up the spiciness a tiny bit again.

That is about all I have for tonight. Tomorrow night I'm not really sure what is going to happen. We are going to a 6 pm presentation by one of my friends and there will be pizza provided. I know the boys will be all over that so I probably won't bother with making anything. I'll just have to wait for the weekend to make my own pizza...which I prefer. Happy cooking!

Day Fifteen--Curried Lentils

Ladies and Gents, we have had our first fail. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I chose this recipe. I guess I looked at the ingredients and I liked each of the things in it...but put together, not so much.

Tonight's dish:

Curried Lentils

It was easy to make. It's good for you. Uh, that's all I have to say. Normally, we like curries. We love Indian food. I'm not sure what went wrong here. I think a lot of it was texture for me. After it simmered it was all kind of mushy. Maybe another reason I didn't like it was because I wasn't very hungry when we ate dinner (thanks to my afternoon snack of pistachios). Interestingly, Connor liked it. He had two bowls of it. Aidan was funny. I really didn't think he would touch it. I gave him a bite of mine and he said it was ok, so I gave him a small bowl. Not surprisingly, he had a couple more bites and said, "Mama, I don't think I do like this." I couldn't be upset with him. He was so good and tasted it and I couldn't blame him. Tim isn't home yet so I can't give you his input on this dish. Knowing him, he'll probably like it, which is good because then he can take the rest of it for lunches for the rest of the week. Oh yeah, it did make a lot too.

I will not be making this dish again. Sorry Martha, it's a no-go for our family. You know what the worst part is? All I can smell right now is curry. I'm not really fond of the smell of curry. If it weren't 47 degrees out, I would open windows to air out.

Day Eight--Baked Pasta with Tomatoes and Mozzarella

Tonight's dinner was a huge success. Win. Score. It was so delicious. It took some planning and part of it was a little more work than usual but so worth it. So, on to the dinner. We had:

Baked Pasta with Tomatoes with Mozzarella.

My first issue that I had with this recipe is that it called for a type of pasta that I've never heard of, nor could I find in the store. Thankfully google helped me out. The pasta was orecchiette. Basically it's a pasta that is shaped kind of like an ear. It's got what looks like a thumb print in the middle. I made my normal pasta recipe...and this is where the extra time comes in... and spent 45 minutes making little pasta ears. The whole time I was making them I was worried that it wasn't going to make enough but it did.

The sauce. Oh, the sauce. It was so good and I think I will use this sauce recipe for every pasta dish I make and I might even use it on our pizzas. It was so easy to make and I was able to use organic tomatoes. Did I mention that it tasted good? Yeah, I think I did.

Dinner didn't stop there though. No. Tim has been whining for a pie lately. I picked up some rhubarb at the store on Sunday. I also picked up some organic strawberries. I made a pie crust first thing this morning and then at lunch time made the pie. I was disappointed with my crust. It didn't really stay together while I was rolling it out and I ended up just pushing it down into the pie plate. It had a crumb top so thankfully I didn't have to put a crust on top. Top the piece of pie with a spot of whip cream (which Connor helped make) and it was the perfect dinner tonight.

To wrap up, all four of us loved this meal. It was easy to make... minus the pasta ears. =) Again, Jamie Oliver, you rock!

Cost of dinner: **figuring out**

Day Seven--Chili Corn Chowder

Tonight's dinner was a change in plans. It was supposed to be fish but I changed it kind of last minute. I knew that I would not be home for dinner and I wanted to make something simple for the boys to enjoy. This dinner was actually supposed to be done a couple of weeks ago and we never got to it. Presenting:

Chili Corn Chowder

It was easy to put together and didn't really have that many ingredients. I got the recipe off of my Jamie Oliver 20 minute meals app. I made it early because I had to leave for a Peace and Justice Awards dinner. Tim took Connor and Aidan to karate and then when they got home, the chowder was still warm. I had shredded some cheddar and chopped up some spring onions and a jalapeno for topping.

Reports are that it was pretty good. I didn't have any. Tim said it could have used more spice and flavor. Connor said it was good and I guess Aidan ate half of a bowl of it. There is a little bit left over that I will have for lunch today.

One thing that I have learned in this first week is the fact that I use my little hand blender almost every day. Thank you mom for giving it to me. It has been a lifesaver. I am still in the market for a food processor and I know which one I want. I'm just waiting a couple of weeks or until the need arises to get it. Oh, and another thing I've learned, I enjoy cooking dinner and listening to Fresh Air on NPR every night. Now that I actually get to spend more time in the kitchen it's fun to listen to NPR because the only other time I get to listen is while we are driving.

That is all for now. Happy cooking!!

Cost per meal: **still figuring out**

Day Six--Crispy Asparagus Potato Tart

I realized that when I made the menu for this week that out of six nights, four of them are things I've never made before. This might have been poor planning. We could all be really grumpy by the end of the week from not eating any tasty food.

Tonight I made Jamie Oliver's Crispy Asparagus and Potato Tart. Can you tell I adore Jamie? I love how he uses real food. Yes, some of it might be fatty but you use such a tiny bit of that to get such a crazy intense flavor. This recipe called for Lancashire cheese. I asked the cheese lady at Wegmans and she said that they used to carry it but no one ever bought it. I had done some research on it when I was making my menus last week and learned it was a harder cheese. I picked up some Gruyere cheese instead. The lovely lady at Wegmans said it would be a suitable substitute. I've never had Gruyere cheese and while it is very expensive, it is very delicious. I used half of the small brick that I got for this dinner. Tim has already claimed the other half to munch on with apples through next week. So presenting:

This recipe said it makes 4 servings. Uh, more like 6 or 7. That's great for us though because it means lunches tomorrow. That's always a plus. It was fairly easy to make. The worst part was working with the phyllo dough. I love how it bakes up but it is a royal pain in the arse to work with. It always tears on me when I'm working with it. I suffered through layering it trying not to get too upset with it. It was going to be covered with potatoes so that helped. I would say all in all it took about 25 minutes to prepare. While my potatoes were boiling, I was able to blanch my asparagus and shred my cheeses, and get my layers of phyllo in the pan. Once the potatoes were done it took 5 minutes to get them mashed and everything pulled together. It baked for 20 minutes and I took advantage of this time to clean up the kitchen.

I did go food shopping today and I did keep my receipt so I'm hoping that I can try to start getting cost per meal going here soon. So, all in all, this dinner was great. All four of us liked it and Aidan said that this needs to go into our weekly rotation. He even liked the asparagus. That is huge for him. I don't think it will go into the weekly rotation though due to the cost of the cheese. Connor and I also had a little bit of coleslaw with ours that was left over from a couple of days ago. It was still tasty.

Well, that's all I have for you now. Until tomorrow. Happy cooking.

**edited to add cost: Last night I was able to figure out the cost for this meal. It was hard to figure it out. I figured what each egg cost, what each ounce of milk cost, and then I came to the cheese. Obviously that was the most expensive part of this dish. Tim said I should count the whole cost of the cheese even though I only used half of it because I wouldn't have bought it if not for this recipe. That is what I did so the total meal was $24.29 split up between 6 servings which comes to $4.05 per serving.

Day Four--Cool Mexican Bean wraps

Tonight we were cooking in a different kitchen. We got into Olean this afternoon and then went food shopping for tonight's dinner and tomorrow nights dinner. It's always interesting shopping in grocery stores that your not used to. For one thing I found the Stevia that we used to always buy and was discontinued at Wegmans. I scooped up three bottles of it for 38.00. Expensive...yes. It's worth it though. We use it in KoolAde for the kids. We try not to use any chemical sweeteners and Stevia is all natural. I was happy to find it.

Anyway, on to dinner. Tim helped me again. Actually, I thanked him because he has pitched in each night so far and not only is it a huge help, it's fun for both of us to be working together. We went the Mexican route tonight:

Cool Bean Mexican Wraps ala Jamie Oliver

We've made these before so they are a repeat for us. They are awesome. I made guacamole and picked up a container of fresh salsa from Tops. I'm usually not one for store bought salsa. That being said, every time we are in Olean I have to get a container of it. I don't know how they do it, but it is so good. So, we enjoyed a bean wrap with some Corona and I'm pleased that instead of eating out on vacation, we cooked real food.

Not much else to report. Until tomorrow. Happy cooking!

**edited to add cost of meal...Total cost was $33.85. It served 6 so cost per person was $5.64. Not too bad for orgnaic beans and tomatoes. That is about what you would spend for a Value meal and it wouldn't have any nutritional value.