What's Cookin?

Here are some dinners that I've made this past month:

I tried out a few recipes from a Rachel Ray cookbook that Lesley gave me for Christmas. The idea behind them is to cook up a large portion of food the first night, but use it 3 different ways for the next few nights' meals. For this one, I roasted carrots, potatoes, cauliflower, and pork on the first night.



Here are the meals that I made from all of that:

Night 1--Roasted pork tenderloin and vegetables with gravy
(using half the pork and veggies)


Night 2--Spiced rice with roasted vegetable curry
(using the other half of the veggies)



Night 3--Roasted pork and black bean chili
(using the other half of the pork and gravy)





Overall, this was a really simple set of recipes and it was nice to have other ways to 're-use' the ingredients for totally different tasting meals. I don't really care for traditional leftovers, but having them in another style meal was no problem.


Here are some other food items unrelated to the set of three above:

homemade brownies for a morning playdate
(Mrs. Quinn's recipe)

cider braised beef with cheddar mashed potatoes

(Rachel Ray's recipe)

When Gram and Madge came down last week for the day, I made a special birthday dinner for Gram--Slovak halusky, apple salad, and brownie sundaes. The halusky (potato dumplings) recipe was from the Slovak-American Women's cookbook:

the halusky dough (grated potatoes, flour, salt, egg)

the recipe and cookbook

the final ingredients--cabbage, onions, boiled halusky dumplings (and butter!)
(Never got a picture of the final meal--guess we were ready to dig in!)

Ella mixing the ingredients for Gram's brownies

Finally, two nights ago we (well, Rob) had BBQ ribs. I used a dry rub first, which sat on the ribs overnight and while cooked slowly for the first two hours, then added BBQ sauce for the last hour. The rub recipe that I used makes a lot, so I stored the rest for other recipes.

the dry rub

(recipe is Memphis Meathead's Memphis Dust)

the ribs ready to eat

(recipe from Cooks.com using the above rub instead)

We've had lots of winter comfort foods---foods that are warm and cook slowly. (Tonight's menu--rigatoni with homemade marinara sauce, garlic bread, salad, and apple coffee cake for dessert...tomorrow is shrimp fajitas, beans, guacamole and chips)....

but, I can't wait for the days of fresh herbs, tomatoes sun-warmed off the vine, and lots of other fresh fruits and veggies from our garden and farmers' market....soon!