Vietnamese-Spiced Pork Chops

This Week's Plan

Meeting Reality: Since my pork chops finally thawed, we had Vietnamese-Spiced Pork Chops that was originally planned for Wednesday. This was okay, but our pork chops were a bit too thick for this recipe, I think. By the time the pork was cooked through, the rub had burned. Served with a rice pilaf and some steamed veggies.

Tomorrow night we'll try out an Indian spice mix with some frozen chicken tenders... Sorry for the lack of pictures. I need to charge the batteries for the camera.

And now it's time to come up with another week's plan. More on that tomorrow.

Taco Bake

This Week's Plan

Meeting Reality - Well I almost didn't make this because it was late before we got home thanks to swimming practice. But I did and it was good, albeit late. This is nice yummy comfort food for me - macaroni and cheese layered with taco meat. I ended up mixing mine up instead of layering it as I had forgotten to stir in the sour cream before starting the layers. But it was still very good, at least to E & I. M had something else to do tonight, which is the other reason this was made tonight - I knew E and I would like this and M would not.

Tomorrow night should be the pork chops we should have had Wednesday. E will probably eat leftovers from tonight.

Soup

This Week's Plan

Reality strikes: Well, when we arrived home this evening, I discovered that the pork chops had not thawed enough yet to cook tonight. So we had to rethink things. We had a couple of boxes of the Campbell's Select soups - one box of Butternut Squash Soup and the other of Italian Tomato Soup. So we heated those up and fixed a sandwich for E, who didn't want any soup. I had the Butternut Squash soup and I have to say it was very good. I would buy it again.

Melting Pot and MyRecipes.com

This will have to be a relatively quick post as my home laptop isn't the most cooperative. Tonight we went to The Melting Pot for a fondue dinner, which was delicious as always. We're all completely stuffed.

Since there's not much to talk about on dinner, I'll tell you quickly about one of my favorite sites for recipes. MyRecipes includes recipes from a number of magazines - including Sunset, Southern Living, Cooking Light, Health, and others. I subscribe to Cooking Light and really enjoy the variety of recipes. MyRecipe's "Dinner Tonight" newsletter always has some nice meals. So check it out.

Crispy Baked Pesto Chicken

The Plan: Crispy Baked Pesto Chicken

The Reality: Same as plan. Yay! It almost went astray as what I thought was frozen chicken breasts turned out to be pork tenderloin. Luckily we had to run another errand tonight, so we stopped by the store and picked up some chicken. It was really easy to make and I love anything with pesto, so of course I loved it. It got the thumbs up from M and E, though not without some "What is that stuff on top?". I had to remind E several times that we've had pesto numerous times before and he loved it so eat it!

I know I'm really behind on posting pictures - I do have them. I just have to get them off the camera and resized.

Tomorrow night, we'll have dinner at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant nearby. They are having some "anniversary" celebration this week, so they are offering 50% off the food bill tomorrow night. Who can resist a deal like that? If you like them and aren't on the mailing list yet, sign up!

Pizza and This Week's Plan

Tonight was homemade (sort of) white pizza with sliced tomatoes and bacon. Someone introduced me to this genius of a pizza once and it's been my favorite ever since. So when we bought some homemade pizza dough while attending a "Pizza and Wine" class at Vino100, I figured I'd try to recreate it. This is my second time using this pizza dough and it works pretty well. This time there was far less cursing, which is a good thing I think. Now that we've used up the dough we purchased, I think next time I might try making some in my breadmaker and see how that works.

I topped the raw pizza dough with a bit of oil, then sprinkled some pre-shredded pizza cheese, then some sliced Roma tomatoes, some chopped mostly-cooked bacon, then some more cheese. I forgot to put the stone in the oven to preheat with it, so the dough didn't get quite as crispy as it did last time. Still it was very good. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures until it was all gone.

This week's plan is as follows:

SUNDAY - Homemade White Pizza with Bacon and Tomatoes
MONDAY - Crispy Baked Pesto Chicken
TUESDAY - Dinner at The Melting Pot
WEDNESDAY - Vietnamese Spiced Pork Chops
THURSDAY - Smoked Salmon Quesadillas
FRIDAY - Taco Bake
SATURDAY - Something indian...

So there you have it. The Chicken tomorrow night is mostly to use up the little bit of pesto left in the refrigerator. The Pork chops are to use up some pork left in the freezer. The quesadillas just sounded odd, so I had to put that on the menu to try out. Friday, it's just E and I, so we're having something that M wouldn't appreciate. I picked up a mix from one of the local indian markets that I hope to try Saturday evening.

Fish & Tots

The Plan: Homemade pizza

The Reality: Frozen beer-battered fish and tater tots. I saw the fish on sale at Target this morning, so I picked some up. For some reason, we never make it out to run errands until late afternoon. So even though you'd think I would have more time to cook on the weekends, it never works out that way. I doubt tomorrow will be any different as we still have to do grocery shopping.

This was the first time we had tried this fish (Gorton's) and it was pretty good, though next time I might use a different pan. My house is all smoky where some of the liquid from the fish spilled over the edge of the stoneware pizza pan I used.

Served with some hard cider. Yum!

Tomorrow morning I will work on the menu and then post it here. I'll also post the pictures from the last two meals.