Spice it up!

The title of this post has dual purpose. I believe in spicing up food as evidenced by my overloaded spice drawer. I was also gently told by a couple of people that I needed to "spice up" my blog as well. With that in mind, I will try to add a little more color commentary to what I do.

The week started out with several days of "repurposed" food. (Okay - we ate leftovers.) Please read through to the end because we ate some good meals at the end of the week.

Menu for February 21 - 27

Monday

We began this week with leftovers from last week. Family members had an option for anything we ate last week except Sunday's ham dinner. I had a plan for that.

Tuesday

Rick and I attended a lovely fundraising banquet for the Parkgate Pregnancy Center.

Wednesday

We ate the ham dinner from Sunday again. (See last week's blog for complete details.) Our son had missed it Sunday so although leftover, for him it was the first time.

Thursday

Thursday is often "Girls Night In." Hannah Ruth and I eat something we like and watch a movie. This week I thawed one of the quarts of spaghetti sauce I made last week and we shared thin spaghetti with homemade sauce and almost no work! Rick prefers shaped pasta so eating long string-like pasta is a girls only treat! I made a little salad for me to go along with our spaghetti. Hannah Ruth opted to watch PBS Sprout rather than a regular movie so I can't report on the movie.

Friday

I guess you have noticed that I made it all the way to the end of the week before I had to do any actual cooking. This was by design. We had a very busy week and little time to cook. Except for the banquet, we still managed to eat meals at home.

My oldest child came home from college this weekend, so I was trying to cook some of his favorites. Friday evenings always begin with some type of appetizers. This signifies for us that the weekend has begun. I like to cook easy on Friday so we had chips with salsa and vegetables with hummus.

For our meal we had homemade pizzas. I made the crusts from a recipe I found in the 1994 Southern Living Yearbook Cookbook. It was called Skillet Pizza Crusts (p. 218.) (I found a nearly identical recipe here.) After you make the dough, you cook them in a non-stick skillet (I used my trusty cast iron) to set the crusts. If you like you can then freeze them for future use. We like to make the crusts personal size so that each person can put the toppings of his/her choice on top. The choices of toppings were the spaghetti sauce I saved from Thursday, shredded mozzarella cheese, sliced pepperoni, chopped artichoke hearts, chopped orange bell pepper, sliced black olives, and fresh mushrooms. In our house there are cheese pizzas to veggie only pizzas to everything pizzas. Everyone has exactly his/her pizza of choice!

Saturday

I'm still on the theme to make some of Richmond's favorites.

We had grilled salmon, couscous, Caesar salad, and homemade French bread.

Last year for Mother's Day, I asked for my own gas grill. I use it all the time. Rick has a big charcoal grill but I don't want to mess with charcoal. I grilled the salmon on my grill and those few minutes while the fish is grilling gives me a few minutes of being alone. Now I know why men offer to grill!

I made the couscous with mushroom broth to give it a little different flavor.

Caesar salad is amazingly simple. Romaine lettuce, shredded Parmesan cheese, croutons and dressing. I decided to make my own dressing this time. It was good, not fabulous, but good. Richmond thought this was one of my best salads so homemade dressing does make a difference.

During the day I also made another batch of homemade yogurt. I told you last week that I made some and I was amazed how fast it we ate it. Hannah Ruth likes it with some Ovaltine and mini chocolate chips mixed in for flavor. Yes, we took a healthy, low calorie food and turned it into a slightly less healthy but kid friendly snack. Rick and I eat it with fruit and granola.

Sunday

For our Sunday dinner this week, we had Asian Pot Roast which is a recipe I have had for sometime. I cut it out of one of the Relish magazines that comes in our paper each month. It uses lots of wonderful ingredients and spices.

With our pot roast we had Asian black rice. I kept reading about Asian black rice so I bought some at an Asian market. I had to go online to find out how to cook it. Basically you cook it like brown rice. It is an unmilled rice so higher in fiber and nutrients than white rice. It is called black, but it is actually purple.

We also had pan roasted broccoli. This is my favorite way to make broccoli. The kids said it was not as good as usual though. This recipe makes me want to grow broccoli since broccoli is one of those vegetables that loses so much of its nutritional value in the refrigerator.

We finished out the meal with some California cuties.

Well, that is it for this week! Tell your friends to check out this blog. I will be out of town next week so I may be a day or two late in posting, but keep checking!