Parmesan Chicken

Made by TMOTH - Internet recipes sometimes work out! More biscuits from a can, corn, and squash from the garden. Yummm.

Pork Chops or Ham

Broccoli, and biscuits from a can.

Lots of cooking tonight - a retirement brunch tomorrow, and I volunteered to bring muffins. I wound up making 4 different kinds of mini-muffins: blueberry, banana nut, donut, and chocolate. The chocolate muffins are wonderful (at least I think so - everybody else in the house is kind of "meh.")

The chocolate muffins are from a recipe from the Fall 1984 (!) Williams-Sonoma catalog:

1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cups cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbs (1/2 stick) butter, melted

Butter the molds of a muffin pan. (I used canola oil spray in liners.) Sift together the flour, cocoa, salt, sugar and baking powder into a bowl. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs lightly then beat in the milk, vanilla extract, and melted butter. Add teh liquids to the dry ingredients and stir quickly. Spoon into the buttered molds about 3/4 full and bake in a 425º oven (I baked at about 375º) for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. (I never pay ANY attention to how long something is cooking. It drives TMOTH crazy.) Remove from molds immediately and serve with fresh butter.
Makes 24 muffins. (I'm not sure it will make 24 muffins - maybe 18? I made 36 mini-muffins and 2 regular size muffins from this recipe.)

Omelettes

Cheese for the boys, plus mushrooms and bacon for me and TMOTH. The pre-teen is sick and didn't eat. Poor baby - I just hope the rest of us don't get it from her.

Tacos, quesadillas, and cantaloupe

Something easy after an afternoon at the movies. Harry Potter was loads of fun - hopefully the mid-kid won't have nightmares tonight. NOW that I've seen the movie, I can re-read the book.

Pita pizza

Poor neglected blog! And all I have to start up again with is pita pizza. Huh.

I do, however, need to start again. We eat better when I keep track of things.
Monday: Chicken sauteed in olive oil, mashed potatoes, carrot sticks, cucumber slices, homemade bread.
Sunday: Pork chops, corn, zucchini, biscuits.
Saturday: Mushroom omelettes

for tomorrow: probably tacos - something with the ground beef in the fridge.

Noticed today: 3 tiny (<1 cm) Monarch butterfly caterpillars on the milkweed. YAY!!!

Lamb Shanks

Yum. In the slow cooker with garlic and dried morels. Home-made bread as well - half/half white and wheat. TMOTH and the toddler had corn from the farmers market to go with it. The other kids had tomato soup - lamb apparently is too "cute" to eat.

Last night was steak for our anniversary, baked potato, and broccoli from the market.

So...we have enough lamb shanks for one leftover meal, possibly enough chicken if it's stretched for another meal, some leftover steak - I should only have to come up with 3 or 4 new ideas for next week.

Cheese & crackers

with ham, wine, cucumbers, and watermelon. It got late - I was a little late getting home 'cause I had to get an anniversary present for TMOTH. Our anniversary is tomorrow - 17 years!

Leftover roast beef and french bread

made for an early dinner, at least. Early dessert, too, to distract the toddler who was screaming for "bubbles." One too many sucking on the bubble wand incidents.+

Beef stir-fry

Some sort of chuck steaks sliced thin, onion, bell pepper, and water chestnuts in Mr. Somebody's cracked pepper and garlic sauce over rice. Chicken-ginger spring rolls. STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE for dessert.

We went and picked strawberries and blueberries today. It is the end of the road for the strawberries, and it was hard picking. Not very many for quite a a bit of work. But, oh so very good. So good I made shortcakes to go with them. Blueberries were plentiful and we got quite a bit more of those, so blueberry muffins for breakfast.

Tacos and quesadillas

Leftover taco meat and leftover mojito chicken = dinner. Quesadillas because the mid-kid ALWAYS wants quesadillas. I don't know how much longer we'll be able to use the lettuce from the garden - it hasn't really bolted yet, but it's getting very leggy and somewhat assertive in flavor. I picked more peas yesterday (about enough for just me) and I have squash coming up!

Hamburgers!

and hot dogs. With chips. Ah, summer.

And a beef. I like ground sirloin for my hamburgers, and luckily I was able to find some this afternoon. I am usually not that lucky. Why is it so hard to find ground sirloin??? They only had the ONE package, or I'd have bought extra and frozen them.

We may yet have s'mores for dessert. We'll see.

Fish (last night)

Mahi-mahi from the frozen section at Trader Joe's, sauteed in olive oil and butter, with salt, pepper, and garam masala. Very very good. I also made hush puppies, just because we hadn't had any in a long time and I wanted some. Also yummy - what's not to like about fried dough? Chicken strips for the kids, along with mozzarella sticks, tater tots for the boys, and watermelon.

Cheese and crackers - with champagne!

We picked up the new [to us] car this afternoon, so a celebration was in order.

Leftover shish-kebab

Along with some french bread from Trader Joe's. Easy, which is good after a long day.

I found us a car today. It looks like a blueberry. I did some looking close to home, but all of the cars were fancy, leather seats, etc. etc. etc. I wanted the bottom of the line. As long as I have kids throwing up in the minivan, I really see no need for fancy. And so I found what I was looking for across the county line.

Tacos and quesadillas

I think the mid-kid would eat quesadillas EVERY day if I let him.

Mojito chicken and biscuits

An odd combination, but TMOTH cooked the chicken, so I wasn't about to argue.

Lasagna

Frozen Stouffer's - mine is much better, but we ate all of it. Garlic bread to go with.

Pancakes and bacon

Since we didn't really have anything else in the house to eat - no bread since the cinnamon toast for breakfast.

Beef Kebabs (last night's dinner)

With rice, pita bread, corn on the cob from the farmers market, and fresh peas from the garden.

The peas were a revelation. I'd grown the for the boys, who really like peas. Turns out they DON'T like FRESH peas, but I DO. I've always hated those nasty little green peas (and still do), but my garden peas taste more like edamame and the leftovers will be wonderful in a pasta salad.

Blogging has fallen off a LOT lately. It started when TMOTH and the mid-kid were in a car accident and I spent a whole week eating mostly fast food. Everybody will be fine (except the van), but it threw a monkey wrench into what has to pass for a routine in this household.

French bread pizza

That makes "Italian" sort-of two days in a row - and the kids both had pizza for lunch! (The mid-kid is at a birthday party; he's eating pizza as well.) We also had honeydew and cantaloupe. The cantaloupe was absolutely wonderful; and it just came from the local Giant (otherwise known as the hell-hole grocery). The honeydew wasn't bad either. I have a really bad habit of buying fruit and then forgetting it until I find it melting into a pool on the kitchen floor. I have another cantaloupe in there that needs to be dealt with reasonably soon.

Who's betting we have strawberries for dessert?