Sunday, March 8, 2009

March 8 - 12

Did you ever have a week where you didn't think you had an extra 30 minutes to cook dinner?  That was last week.  I didn't post, and I'm a bit embarrassed to recap now...  just not a good dinner week.  We did have quesadillas one night with goat cheese...  that was good.  I'm so glad Mike made quesadillas all the time when we lived together in Alma -- I learned it from her, and it's my super-fast-fallback-food now.

Anyway, we plan to do better this week:

Sunday
We're roasting a chicken!  Mix up a bunch of chopped garlic, some lovely herbs, salt and pepper, olive oil, white wine, then loosen the skin so you can shove the mixture between the skin and the meat.  I even read a recipe for Psycho Chicken once...  basically the same ingredients, but you stab the chicken repeatedly with a big knife (hence the "Psycho") so the good stuff gets down into the meat even more.  A bit more salt and pepper on the skin, then tent with foil and into the oven at about 400 (maybe a bit less).  After about an hour, take the foil off and keep cooking until it's done.  I use a meat thermometer -- I can't remember now what the internal temperature should be.

We'll roast sweet potatoes too -- cut in chunks, dress with olive oil, salt and pepper, spread on a pan for about 30 minutes.

Baby broccoli -- steam/saute for a few minutes.

Monday
Quesadillas again -- use the leftover chicken!
Saute an onion, some garlic, the chicken, maybe a few black beans.
Put a tortilla on a warm skillet (you can spray with cooking spray first), spread mixture out on the tortilla, sprinkle cheese, add another tortilla, cook until 1st side's toasted, then flip.  That's the messy part, but you get to snack on anything that flies out of the quesadilla.  It's the rule.

Salsa, sour cream, chopped avocado on the side.

Tuesday

Wednesday
Random pasta night:
Saute an onion (confession:  95% of the things I cook start this way)
add some mushrooms, whatever other veggies are left over/laying around -- a bit of zucchini?  a tomato?
Cook up pasta.  When it's almost done, add to the veggie saute, add some pesto, a bit of the pasta water, simmer a bit until the starchy water and the pesto make a sauce, add some salt and pepper, sprinkle with cheese.

Thursday

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Overall, your bad dinner week is MUCH better than mine...

I had 2 bowls of cheerios last night, oatmeal for lunch today and of course, for dinner tonight was quesadillas!!

the allmens said...

I'm too spoiled. Monday last week our housekeeper was home with her sick son. She usually cooks on Monday, so when there was no dinner waiting for us I got nervous. I was ready to bolt and go out for some Chinese food, so I got nervous when Rachel suggested we make pasta...

...which only consisted of cooking the pasta and microwaving the frozen sauce we had!!

Karen Allmen said...

I think, if I had to, I could live on quesadillas and pasta. And soup.

Alan, don't ever be nervous about pasta! Your noodles love you.

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