It's not easy being green!

Remember this monochromatic meal???

Well, what better day for another monochrome meal than St. Patrick's Day!??! And while the leprechauns did not turn our milk green, we did have a 'green' meal! And, it's made from things you've read about here!

First came the main dish - usually this is Spinach & Mushroom Ravioli - but today it was Whole Wheat Cheese Tortellini (store was out of ravioli....and since Druggy and I are on weight watchers, the whole wheat pasta was a better route anyway!)

And there are a plethora of green vegetables we could have eaten in our green meal...green beans, asparagus, broccoli...all are family favorites...but the most famous is the artichoke...so that's what we had!

and finally...we top it off with a salad...green, but also very colorful!

A great way to celebrate the holiday through food...speaking of which...we did that on Valentine's day, though um...the coloring wasn't quite as sucessful...

Orange (rather than pink eggs)...

Heart shaped cinnamon rolls...

and the kids' favorite....pink grits.

No choking here!

One of the kids new favorite dinnertime vegetables - artichokes!

Hard to imagine, but some nicely sauteed and steamed artichokes, dipped in some garlic butter, are now one of their favorite things!

So here's how I make them:

Cut the tops of the chokes and snip off any remaining 'pokies' on the leaves.


Now cut them in half and scoop out the 'fur' - this is relatively easy, but also not entirely necessary. I do it to avoid any unnecessary fur consumption later.

Melt some butter in a pan and add some fresh garlic. Heat enough to get the garlic infused into the butter and add the artichokes.

Saute for about 5 minutes on each side.

Add some water and cover and steam until artichokes are tender (15 - 20 minutes).

Melt some additional butter with garlic for dipping.

To eat, simply peel leaves off one by one and scrap out the small amount of 'meat' at the base of the leaf - this portion of the leaf can be dipped into the garlic butter (or mayo or a mustard sauce) before 'scrapping'.

The kids love these, and even the youngest, at only 2 years old, knows how to scrape out the 'meat' without eating the rest of the leaf.

Here's the stack of discarded leaves from just my two older yahoos!

Enjoy!

Sweetest Day

Just so you know, I'm not always looking for the easiest, most processed way to cook dinner for my family. On Sweetest Day, I ventured to my favorite website for recipes in search of one for salmon. This is another one of those meals that we had a 'kid dinner' and then an adult dinner after they were in bed - in celebration of Sweetest Day (and the 13th anniversary of our first date!) The kids DO eat salmon, but they missed out on this meal.

I love this site because it is composed of recipes submitted by individuals, but also with a great system for reviews and ratings.

I selected a salmon and creamy dill sauce recipe. I'm not a huge fan of dill, but there were many recipes on the site that paired salmon and dill, so i figured they must know something I didn't.

So I followed the recipe (for the most part!) by putting the salmon fillet on a sheet of aluminum foil and sprinkling it with lemon pepper and garlic salt. Then I topped it with some thin slices of onion, lemon and some pats of butter and closed it all up for baking.

While it baked, I mixed up the creamy dill sauce - comprised of mayo, sour cream, dill, finely chopped onions, garlic salt, and a tad bit of horseradish.


After initial baking, the salmon was broiled for a bit to finish it off.

I served it with wild rice and green beans and it was INCREDIBLE. Hurray for another successful recipe search on the web!

Everybody loves pie!

And Shepherd's Pie is no different! This fantastic all-in-one meal is SO easy, it's crazy - and very tasty to the hubby and the yahoos. It hearkens us back to England and our pub-fare days (though we would typically order the bangers and mash or fish and chips, the shepherd's pie is good, too!)

So here's how i make it...

Many of the above pictured ingredients COULD be made from scratch - nice, creamy, homemade mashed potatoes...gravy leftover from last night's pot roast...and for that matter, last night's pot roast. I, however, VERY rarely cook like that. This meal is much more processed (and I'm sure high in sodium), but it's easy and it's not fast food.


So - a box (or two) of steak-um like meat things. Cook these up in a frying pan. I have made this with ground beef before, but we prefer the steak-ums.

This becomes layer Number One in your baking dish.

Layer Number Two is your frozen vegetables. I've used the carrot/pea/corn/green bean mixture, which is the most popular, or just corn and green beans. There's some out there with lima beans in them (which i despise) but I'm sure would be enjoyable to some of you.

Layer Number Three is the gravy. I have been known to add TOO much gravy, and then it ends up boiling over. Really one and a half of these jars would be perfect.

Make up the mashed potatoes according to the directions on the box. Sometimes I've gotten fancy with how I put Layer Number Four on there - with my Pampered Chef Accent Decorator, making pretty little swirls. Sometimes I just spread (and I use that term loosely) the potatoes on the top - it's not easy, I don't recommend that method. On this night, I used a scoop, which worked beautifully.

Now it's ready to hit the 425 degree oven for about half an hour, til it looks like this.

And because it's got your meat, veggie and starch all in one, you can serve with just a salad, or a breadstick and feel good about yourself. So that's what I did.

yellow

Sometimes it's fun to plan a meal that centers all around one color. My middle school home ec teacher, Mrs. Johnson, would disagree strongly with me, as part of our grade included whether we had a good variety of colors on our plate. But for meals with young children, it's fun to make them all one color sometimes, too!

So I present to you, our 'yellow' meal:

Our 'ingredients' - fresh pineapple spears, direct from Hawaii. Even Lilly, who doesn't eat a lot of fruit, and really doesn't like pineapple, ate several of these. Most of you reading this blog will probably have to settle for the Meijer version of this fruit...shameful.

Pork tenderloin - I make many of these, in a variety of ways. This particular one was a Meijer marinated version that I baked. The kids enjoy pork quite a bit, regardless of the flavor (though Jason's favorite by far is slow-cooked with saurkraut).

Our side dish tonight was "Cheesy Rice". I typically use Minute Rice because even though rice isn't hard to cook, Minute Rice takes just minutes...duh. For this recipe I mixed in several slices of processed cheese...you can use small cubes of Velveeta, too. Then I sprinkled it with parsley to make it look like I'm a fancy cook. A fancy cook that makes Minute Rice.

And finally, for our vegetable this evening, I present the ever popular corn.

What color will your meal tonight be??

ribs and fries

One of our new summertime favorites!

Pork spareribs...SO yummy, and really SO easy to make! We have them with relative frequency, particularly when they are on sale! My kids love them so much, one rack is barely enough.

Here's how I make them:

I start with my rack(s) of ribs, some ground black pepper and what we refer to as "Special Salt" in our house - a.k.a. Lawry's Seasoned Salt.


Sprinkle ribs with Special Salt and then Ground Pepper. (You can reverse this order! :) ) Also, if you like things with a 'kick' add more black pepper.


Rub slightly.

Put onto a cookie sheet (I always cover mine with foil cause then washing, which I DESPISE, is much easier). You can see here with two racks, I use my broiler pan for one - with the bottom layer covered with foil for that 'easier clean up' idea.

Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, sometimes a bit more. This is essentially cooking the ribs completely, but nice and slowly. This can be done much earlier in the day than the meal you intend to ingest it for.

When you're getting ready to eat, heat the grill to low and throw the ribs on there. Grill enough to completely heat through and infuse the ribs with 'grilling flavors'.

Look how yummy they look when they're done! Cut apart and serve!


To help make this meal complete, I frequently make one of my favorites - Sweet Potato Fries. While not a favorite of the kids, they can be cooked in tandem with regular potato fries, which are a favorite of kids (particularly when a big bottle of Hidden Valley Ranch is handy).

Start by peeling some Sweet Potatoes and slicing them into fry-like bite-size pieces. Throw them into a large ziploc bag and drizzle in some olive oil (not too much!) and some salt and pepper. Shake to coat.


I always cook my fries on my Pampered Chef stoneware as opposed to a regular metal cookie sheet. It helps the moisture evaporate better and can give them a bit more of cooked outer coating (I would not say that they really ever get crispy because I cook so many at a time...but if I actually spread them out more, they would crisp much better on the stoneware. (This picture is deceiving, because usually I have twice as many on the pan at one time!)

The fries will bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, depending on how many you have in there, and I monitor them and try to flip them at least once while cooking.

How delicious!!! I could eat a million of these....really.