What's for Dinner Wednesday

ball.and.chain

What's for dinner tonight...or have you had anything great this week?

QOTW is provided by @ATXMommas this week: What are your favorite recipe sources?

SweetPea0307

Tonight my wife is making empanadas de viento for our spanish class, since she's giving a presentation on the different types of empanadas throughout Latin America. They're fried dough filled with cheese and they're served with pickled onions. Definitely not the healthiest food, but super yummy. 

QOTW: So my wife does all the cooking, but some of her favorite sources are smitten kitchen, joy the baker, and NPR.

YBnormal85

My wife was a cook in the army so she is the main cook in the house as she is 10x better than I am lol. Tonight we will actually be eating seperately as I am taking a detox your home class and need to eat prior to leaving.

I am such a picky (and admittedly not so healthy) eater.so I look forward to getting some new ideas from this thread!

2MamazInSeattle

Well this week dinner will be something in the Detroit airport. Mmmm, can't wait.
:-S

However, last Wednesday I was a little slow and never did post another one of our favorites that I made that night, Chicken Tagine with Green Olives & Fennel, from Epicurious. This is a regular dish in our house too - I add a lot more spices than they recommend, and also put in carrots and sometimes potatoes to make it a hearty 1-dish dinner/stew. Definitely use the low-salt broth as recommended because the olives do salt it up! Oh, and if you are vegan/veg, this would be great with tofu and veggie broth instead! And though it is a tagine, you don't need a special pan. I have a tagine, but typically make this in a chef's pan with a lid.

https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chicken-Tagine-with-Fennel-and-Olives-356692

QOTW: Great question @AXTMommas! For sure it's www.epicurious.com - they also have apps for phones where you can save your favorites. The app will generate grocery lists for you too. Another unlikely source I love, particularly for fish recipes, is www.williams-sonoma.com - I swear their fish recipes have NEVER failed me! In fact, this one, fish with olives, basil and pine nuts, (link) is spectacular and SO easy that my Dallas-based boss who can't cook made this when he had friends in town and it was perfect! I love baked fish dishes so you can serve 4 people at once. Anyhow, those are my two go-to's!

KH826

Sooooo... remember how I posted last week about how this thread was going to keep me inspired and motivated to cook? Yea, it's been a tough week for that in my house (since last week's Wednesday check-in). I was a tired mess at the end of last week, then my wife injured herself and we ended up in the ER for several hours on Saturday, and then my wife came down with a cold and only wanted soup for 2-3 days... so, I took a cooking hiatus, but I am back! I hope!

Here are two meals that I have made since last week (might be the only two that I have made - woops!).... PIP#1 is from our breakfast for dinner splurge night where I made giant egg white omelets with spinach and mushrooms and sauteed potatoes and peppers on the side. It was really yummy! PIP#2 is last night's dinner. I tried to get back on the healthy cooking and eating bandwagon with my favorite meal - baked salmon, roasted green beans and sauteed cauliflower. It was a success!

Tonight, the plan is to make roasted portobello caps stuffed with quinoa and other veggies and topped with parmesan cheese, with sauteed broccolini on the side. That is the plan!

QOTW: I don't really use recipes that often. I should. I have about 10 things that I make well, and I usually just rotate them until one or both of us get bored with them and then we search for some new options. I get ideas and inspiration from Pinterest or Cooking Light magazine... or sometimes just from spending WAY too long in the grocery store on a Sunday and walking around thinking about what would be good and filling my cart. I need more of a system for this for when I have less time (soon!), but at this point that is my approach... kind of an ad hoc approach to cooking!

rkbo

I've been really bad and haven't cooked in quite a while. I will either drive through somewhere on my way home or eat a bean and cheese burrito from the freezer for dinner lol.

My go-to site is www.allrecipes.com and I have been using it for many years. I love that you can read all of the reviews, and get ideas on how to make the recipe better to your liking. I am not good and cooking without a recipe, so I usually follow it to a T.

healz413

I'm not sure what's for dinner tonight. Since Amanda has been sick, what we eat is largely determined by her appetite. We have all of our freezer food from last week (chili, pasta sauce, veggie shepherd's pie, and black bean burgers).

But in order to contribute something new, I will share these "cookies" I've been making recently.

( you can find the recipe online, as well.)

1/2 cup oats (I use rolled oats; I think quick oats would work; I don't think steel cut oats would workd)
1 mashed overripe banana
Add-ins-- I like chocolate chips and walnuts or pecans. If you're a raisins in cookie person, you could go that route.

Preheat oven to 350
Mix all the ingredients together (I make a "triple batch"--it's a tiny batch at 1/2 cup oats and one banana--that's really just the ratio) and spoon onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15-20 min depending on how large your cookies are.

They are not nearly as sweet as regular cookies, but they're way simpler and better for you, so you can eat MORE! Some like them hot. I like them cooled.

QOTW: I tend to like allrecipes.com. I like to choose only very highly reviewed recipes and read the comments for suggestions on changes to make.

KH826

@healz413 - I have made those cookies before, and I really liked them. My wife wasn't as big of a fan, because she said she could taste too much banana in them. So I made them again and the next time I used some reduced fat hot cocoa mix that I also mixed in and it made them more of a chocolatey flavor and masked some of the overpowering banana taste that my wife wasn't really a fan of. You can also cut the amount of banana in half and mix in applesauce as a substite for 1/2 of the banana. At any rate, I really like these cookies as a not as guilty pleasure treat that are pretty easy to make! So I second your recommendation!

redrockmama

Mmmm now I want cookies!

We have quite a bit of painting to do after work so I think we'll probably make spaghetti squash spaghetti with a salad.

I'm sad that we only have 1 or 2 jars of our heirloom garden tomatoes left Good thing we are getting our garden ready next week. 

QOTW: We keep it pretty varied. We have a ton of cookbooks that we use to try new recipes. I'm also a pinterest fan and my wife sent me these two from her coworker last week, which I liked

https://www.budgetbytes.com/category/recipes

https://foodgawker.com/

StacyLH24

@healz413‌ - I have made those cookies and love them! I add ground cinnamon.

On Sunday we made cheesy ham and potatoes in the crock pot. Here is the recipe:
- 6 cups peeled, cubed potatoes (we used red potatoes)
- 2.5 cups cubed ham
- 1.5 cups shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 can (10.75 oz) cream of mushroom soup
- 1/2 cup evaporated milk.

Layer 1/3 potatoes, ham and cheese, repeat. Mix the soup and evaporated milk until creamy and spread over top. Put crockpot on low for 7-8 hours. We were pressed for time so cooked it on high for 4 hours.

I also made homemade apple crisp cheesecake from a recipe on Pinterest. The picture was nothing like what came of the recipe, but it tasted delicious. Here is the link...
https://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/665189970/apple-crisp-cheesecake/

Tonight I am planning to have baked tilapia with roasted sweet potatoes and probably some steamed broccoli and cauliflower. I like my tilapia with just some seasoning. C has hers with a piece of American cheese melted on top.

QOTW: I usually enjoy recipes from Pinterest, though I haven't done much with it lately. I'm not a huge recipe person to begin with. I usually improvise and have several staples that I try to rotate.

2momsinCA

We are having eggplant parm and whole wheat pasta tonight. And a salad.

Out favorite source for recipes lately has been Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison which my sister got me for my birthday (my wife is vegetarian, I am not, but I tend to cook more vegetarian and I enjoy veggie cookbooks). We also love www.spoonfulofsugarfree.com, she makes tons of delicious cookies, breads, cakes, etc with only natural sweeteners. Variations of the banana cookies are on there too- we love the "high protein cookies" made with peanut butter and banana.

ball.and.chain

Tonight: flounder, colcannon and salad. The colcannon recipe is from Martha Stewart and is actually leftovers from Sunday night. I was really just looking for ways to use half a cabbage I had lying around in the fridge: https://www.marthastewart.com/344831/colcannon

QOTW: I used to read a LOT of food blogs. When Google Reader went away, I never really successfully made the move to Feedly(?) and just stopped reading most of the blogs, but I hit them up occasionally to see what they are doing. Favorites: Smitten Kitchen, The Wednesday Cook, Orangette, Bon Appetempt. I also regularly read the Dining In/Dining Out section of the NYT on Wednesdays, and several magazines that are food-oriented or have food sections: Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Martha Stewart Living, Real Simple, and Better Homes and Gardens. While I'm reading, I dog-ear anything I want to pin, and then I go online and pin those recipes on Pinterest so I have everything in one place (if it's a blog or something I'm reading online, I just pin it immediately). When I'm looking for inspiration for meals, I go through my "Recipes To Try" board to see if anything appeals to me at the moment or matches what I have in the fridge. If I try it and I like it, I move the pin to a "Keepers" board so that I know it is worth making again. I don't usually use the "search" feature on Pinterest, though -- if I'm looking for something specific, I find I get better results searching Google. That said, I have certain sites I prefer when choosing which Google results to check out -- usually Epicurious, one of the aforementioned blogs or magazines, Saveur, or the Kitchn.

newmompeanut

Tonight:  Turkey with carrots (cooking in the crock pot now), mashed potatoes, applesauce, and probably blackberries since N can't stop eating them!

B is much better at finding new recipes to try.  I'm mean well and always pin new things on Pinterest, but never end up making them.  The other day I got really crazy and added chicken to our baked spaghetti. 

2brides

We are having a crazy week since I was out Monday/Wed and L was out Tues/Thurs and the kids are having a sleepover at someone else's house on Friday.

Last night I grilled burgers in the snow. Tonight I am going to dinner by myself before my volunteer gig. I am still trying to decide where to go. I found an awesome place that does mussels and frites and beer for $16..or there is a place that has awesome salads and pizza...or maybe I'll take a quick trip to Target and then do something fast like Chipotle...or....Potbelly since neither L nor the kids like it...the possibilities are endless.

We do a lot of grilling year round (hence my grilling in the snow yesterday.) L is doing Ideal Protein so she really just eats veggies/salads/meat (with sugar-free marinades.) Needless to say our meals are pretty boring.

ATXmommas

I think I'm eating ancho lentil tacos with Spanish quinoa. The ancho lentil taco recipe is from theppk.com (more about that below). I kinda made up the Spanish quinoa recipe and I think I have perfected it. It's kinds like Spanish rice, but way better. I'm often trying new recipes, but the ancho lentils are a favorite in our house.

QOTW: Isa Chandra Moskowitz is kinda a rockstar in the vegan world and I personally think she can do no wrong. She has a blog - theppk.com - with tons of recipes and I have several of her cookbooks. My current fave is her latest, Isa Does It, which is intended to be more pantry-friendly and less time intensive than her most well known cookbook, Veganomicon. I also like 101cookbooks and Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, but don't use either with great frequency. Otherwise, I just google, which was helpful when I received kohlrabi in my farm-to-market share a couple months ago and I had no idea what to do with it!

@2MamazInSeattle‌ - I used to browse epicurious a bit, but everything seemed so fancy and complicated to me. I need to check it out again.

@KH826 - I'm going to have to try roasted green beans soon!

Jazibel

I've been super lazy cooking for the family this week, we ate out Monday & Tuesday.  But tonight we had leg of lamb, pan seared and then roasted with herbs and lemon; roasted sweet potato slices with coconut oil, cinnamon, ginger and spices and brussel sprout leaves sauteed in butter with herbs. I totally nailed dinner EV was raving.  I'm still pretty new to cooking, so I get really excited when I make something that's even better than edible ;-)

QOTD:  I like pinterest, and epicurious.  But often I just do a google search and pick a recipe with a high star rating.  I'm starting to understand recipes a little more and be able to adjust them, and substitute things when needed.

I'm getting so many good ideas from this thread.  (And it's keeps me cooking - at least on Wednesday's)  ;-)