Another Week's Worth of Meals

Since it's taken me till now to get blogger back under control, I have to post the whole week's worth of meals in one post. I guess some of you will like that right? Fewer emails from Kenzie . . . anyway, here we go:

Monday: Au Gratin Potatoes and Turnips


Ok, so this one was forged from a desperation created from old turnips and potatoes. I searched for recipes to use them up and came up with this: http://www.marthastewart.com/313868/potato-and-turnip-gratin. I give this one a thumbs down, although Andrew still enjoyed it. Course the truth is, I hardly followed the recipe so to be fair to Martha Stewart, I'm sure her recipe was just fine. Instead of Heavy Cream I used Condensed Chicken Soup, didn't use any herbs, and totally skipped the infusing herbs step. On top of all of it, I didn't cook it long enough resulting in crunchy vegetables. (It made sense at the time. I mean my oven normally burns everything if cooked at the normal time so I figured cut the time in half . . .  not this time!) I guess I forgot to take a picture, but the truth is you didn't miss much. It looked cool when I put it in the oven but after . . . yup, maybe I didn't take a picture to avoid shame.

Tuesday: Hamburgers and Root Beer


To make up for the previous failed meal, Andrew got to pick Tuesday's dinner. Although he says he has enjoyed my meals so far I was thoroughly unsurprised when he asked if we could have Hamburgers. If you have not been out to dinner with Andrew you may not realize that Hamburgers are pretty much his favorite food. Since we don't have a grill I figured this would be pretty tricky, but the truth is - it was the easiest meal I made this week. We bought hamburger, I put some seasoning on it, cut up some onion and tomato, and grilled the hamburger on the wonderful pan given to me by the Nyhus family. It has grill ridges running down the middle so the hamburger came out looking like I had BBQ'd it. Complete with Andrew's favorite brand of Root Beer (Vergil's), this meal would have turned out fabulously if Andrew's work hadn't run 30 min over and caused the meat to get a little tough. He says it still turned out great though and I won't be surprised if he asks to have hamburgers again in the near future.

Wednesday: Crockpot Lemon Chicken with Veggies


This was a wonderful meal! I loved it and highly recommend it. So easy (as with almost all crockpot recipes) and it tasted great! This came from a taste of home recipe book from the Pettets (I think . . . I'm sorry if I mix up gifts).

Ingredients:
1 pound fresh baby carrots
3 cups cubed red potatoes
1 package frozen pearl onions (thawed)
2 celery ribs, thinly sliced
6 bone-in-chicken breast halves with skin removed
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt

Notes:
I could not find frozen pearl onion anywhere so I just chopped up some fresh onion left over from hamburgers and it worked just fine. I also really dislike having to pick my chicken off the bone so I just used some deboned chicken breasts Grandma left me (thanks gram! They've been a big help in cooking.) Also, in my poor college kitchen I have basically no spices (besides rosemary which is growing in my garden - not even cinnamon) so I just skipped the parsley and thyme. I bet they would have even added to the wonderful dish.

Steps:

Combine the vegetables in your slow cooker and place the chicken on top. Combine the soup, water, lemon juice, and seasonings in a small bowl and then pour over the chicken. Then cook for 8-9 hours on low and enjoy. This recipe says it makes 6 servings but Andrew and I ate our fill and there's really only one helping left over so . . . judge well. It makes good left overs anyway so it's okay if you make too much.

A total thumbs up, I can't wait to reuse this one again. I aparently forgot a picture again. Oops . . . but I found the recipe on this website and it has a picture: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/Lemon-Chicken-Breasts-with-Veggies

Thursday: Egg Drop Soup and Pepperoni Pizza Bread


Yes, it's as weird of a meal as it sounds and I should never do it again. The combination of smells really didn't agree with me and I felt sick after cooking. I give both of these a thumbs down but Andrew still liked them.

Egg drop soup:

2 cups water
2 eggs (beaten)
1/4 diced onion
1/4 cup diced celery
1/4 cup green bell pepper
1 package chicken ramen noodles

Bring water to boiling and add seasoning packet, eggs, and vegetables. Stir constantly till eggs look done and simmer for 5 minutes. Add noodles and cook 3-5 minutes more, or until noodles are tender.

First of all, I don't like green bell pepper, so I just didn't add it. Second of all, this actually tasted exactly like the egg drop soup you get in pretty much every asian restaurant, but I just didn't like it. It was a little bland so I would have added more than just the one seasoning packet and it came out really thick and I had to add another cup of water. (Which in hindsight is probably the reason it was bland.) Maybe it was meant to be that thick but honestly there was no broth left it was more of a stew.

Pepperoni Pizza Bread:

I took some french bread, cut it in half, covered it in Preggo red sauce, put some pepperoni and cheese on it, and stuck it in the oven. Honestly it would have worked fine if I hadn't put it with Egg Drop Soup and burned it. I think my oven has a personal vendetta against Pizza. Every time I try to make it in there, it burns. It was only in the oven for like 10 minutes so I must have had the oven on too high. Sigh, I'll never know how to work that oven. Good for college students but don't make for a family. Don't do it.

Friday: Salmon Fest


This was fun! For $15 dollars a plate (and after a huge line) the Payson firefighters dish up heaping plates of corn, potato, colsalaw, cookies, water, and fresh Alaska Salmon. And when I say heaping, I do mean heaping. I've heard from my family that the fish is wonderful! It falls right off the skin and is well seasoned. They give you lemon juice and tartar sauce for it too. I did try 3 whole bites of my portion before handing it off to family. I try a little more each year but I can't seem to get past the fishy taste (which everyone else denies is there) and the grain of the fish muscle. Ask Andrew, the texture really means a lot to me. It was a wonderful break for Andrew and I (we didn't even have to wait in line thanks to awesome family . . . and being late) and the belly dancing was good. (A bit of an inside joke there. When I went with Andrew's family last year, there was a family of belly dancers performing. Which is cool except for the poor poor boy about Caiden's age who was up there belly dancing with the girls and boy did he have the belly to dance with. The other boys got swords, but obviously he hadn't graduated to being cool like that.)

Saturday: Slow Cooker French Dip


Ahh, we just ate this and it was really good. Andrew LOVED it but I have a few critiques.

Found on this website: http://bakingbites.com/2008/02/slow-cooker-french-dip-sandwich/


approx 3 1/2 lbs beef chuck roast
16-oz. beef broth (1 1/2 cans)
1 10.5-oz. can condensed French onion soup
6-oz red wine
1 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper, to taste
4-6 French rolls
sliced provolone cheese, optional

Trim excess fat off of beef roast and season meat all over with salt and pepper.

Pour beef broth, condensed French onion soup, red wine and garlic powder into slow cooker and place beef roast into liquid. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Take beef out and rest it, covered with aluminum foil, for about 15 minutes. Slice beef and return to slow cooker on low or very low for 30 minutes. Lightly toast the bread and evenly distribute cheese between rolls, if using. Divide beef onto rolls and spoon the beef juicer small bowls and eat everything while it is hot. Serve each sandwich with its own dip. Serves 4-6.

Well, one obvious change is I left out the red wine. I checked before hand to see if I needed to substitute something for it and in the end I opted for dumping the rest of the can of beef broth in. I mean, what am I going to do with half a can of left over beef broth anyway? Don't skimp on the cheese! It goes really well with the whole meal. Overall, super good. The hardest part of the whole meal was slicing the meat. I don't know if it's the cut of meat the lady recommended (I know nothing about that) but the grain of the meat made it really hard to cut into slices and in the end I just ended up cutting it into chunks. Still, the meat really melted in our mouths and the whole sandwich was good enough for Andrew to brag to his work team about it. (*success*) Something still tasted a bit off . . . too salty? Missing a spice? I'm not even sure what I'm comparing it to. Do we have a family recipe I'm used to? Never mind the recommendations - the whole thing was really good and you should definitely try it!

An afterthought:

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I've gotten a bit creative with paint strips and decorating.

It's my little Tulip Garden! The paint strips came in those leaf shapes so it was pretty simple to put this up. I just used some blue tape to put it up that way it wouldn't damage the paint. 10 points to whoever can figure out what I was trying to make with the blue along the baseboard!