The theme this week seems to be substituting proteins, as you're about to see:
Chicken Orzo Salad w/ Goat Cheese - This is one of my all-time favorite recipes. It tastes so good the next day after it's nice and cold and the flavors have blended in the fridge. I chose this recipe this week to use up the rest of the goat cheese from the walnut pasta dish I made last week, and I'm making it specifically for my lunches. So tasty, so good for you, so damn easy.
It really does look this pretty too.
Sauteed Cod w/ Plum Tomatoes & Spinach + roasted red potatoes. The original recipe calls for Snapper, which I couldn't find so I decided to go with some fresh Cod Loin instead. I have never cooked cod before, so we'll see how it goes.
Spicy Sweet & Sour Chicken - A new Asian-influenced dish for us. I was drawn to this recipe because the blurb describes the sauce as "lighter and fresher-tasting" than the version you find in restaurants. We'll see how accurate that is. I plan on serving over white rice.
Salmon w/ Orange-Caper Relish w/ salad- Original recipe is for Arctic Char, which I have never once seen in my life. But Salmon is a ready sub for Arctic Char, so that's what we're going with. I wanted to try this one while oranges are still pretty good quality.
Chicken a la Provencal over mixed greens & garlic bread - This recipe was written for Halibut, but the page from the magazine issue says it also works well with chicken. I didn't want to overload on fish this week since it's not cheap, so I decided to try it with the chicken. I've been sitting on this one for awhile because I couldn't find Herbs de Provence, but as soon as I found them in the market I decided to pull this recipe out to give it a go.
Corn & Potato Chowder - I love everything about chowders - making them, eating them. I already have a pretty good corn chowder recipe, but I want to try the Cooking Light version to see how it compares.
Sauteed Chicken Breasts w/ Balsamic Vinegar Pan Sauce + Pecorino-Garlic Brussels Sprouts. Another basic chicken recipe to try. I don't typically eat Brussels sprouts. Although I love most vegetables in this world, I never quite warmed up to this one. There never seemed to be enough butter in the world to make them taste good. But in an effort to broaden our horizons and set a good example for the baby, we're going to give this one a shot. I figure, anything with Pecorino & garlic has to be at least pretty good, right?
Spaghetti w/ Meatballs - My hubby requested this meal for this week since he's been craving some basic pasta. Confession - I will be using Barilla Tomato & Basil sauce out of the jar because a) it's goddamn good stuff and b) I don't have the time or patience to make my own sauce at this point. So the recipe link is really for the meatballs, which I have never made by hand before. I imagine the turkey sausage is going to make them pretty damn awesome, I plan on using hot sausage rather than sweet.
4 comments:
Arctic char is really, really good. If you manage to find some, I recommend you give it a try.
Also, you should really post some pictures of the actual food that you make, not stock photos downloaded from the Internet.
I would love to post pics of my actual food, but dinner-making time usually involves prepping and cooking while entertaining the baby, chasing him around and keeping him from dying, and making his food as well. I have not once paused in the chaos and thought, "I should take a pic of this for the blog."
Nothing, so far, has been THAT pretty. lol
NO EXCUSES! lolz
And here are this week's reviews:
Sauteed Cod - this was okay. A is not a huge seafood eater, so he said while he didn't like it, he didn't hate it either. But because I paid $9/lb for the cod, I won't be making this again - the end result isn't worth it.
Spicy Sweet & Sour Chicken - HUGE hit. A's first quote after eating it: "I would lick this off the floor." I thought it was pretty good, with an average amount of prep work and cooking time, so we'll be having this one again.
Salmon w/ Orange Caper Relish - this one was like a good idea gone horribly wrong. If I ever did something like this again, I would stick to just the oranges, juice, and zest and skip all the added spices and the capers. It just wasn't good.
Chicken a la Provencal - boring. Though to be fair, I didn't use the mixed greens part of the recipe because my "mixed greens" didn't last long enough in the fridge. So it ended up being chicken breasts sprinkled with herbs de Provence. And I don't need a recipe for that.
Corn & Potato Chowder - pretty good. I added more water and seasoning to the recipe because I had more vegetables than the recipe called for (used 1 good size green pepper & 2 med-large potatoes)
Chicken breasts w/ Balsamic pan sauce & Brussels sprouts - Fail. FAIL. Fail. This is the first Cooking Light recipe I did not finish eating before tossing it out. The chicken had no flavor whatsoever on its own, and when combined with the sauce it just drowned in it. The Brussels sprouts were surprisingly bland given the amount of garlic and cheese on them. They weren't that bad, but I don't think I'll ever make them again.
Spaghetti w/ Meatballs - the CL recipe for meatballs was pretty damn good. It makes me want to put turkey sausage in every ground beef recipe I make.
So that's it for this week! The successes were wild and the failures were too. LOL
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