<p>At my Sat. dinner party someone brought me a wonderful gift of porcini mushrooms. So last night I made a big batch of porcini risotto. Left over risotto tonight served with salad and grilled tri-tip. Wed will be tri-tip sandwiches.</p>
<p>Heading to foodgawker now…thanks.</p>
<p>I used Trader Joe’s pizza dough some and then I found Mark Bittman pizza dough recipe. It is so easy to stir together and keep in the refrigerator for a fairly healthy pizza anytime. The pizza dough worked so well - it led me to the 5-minute Artisan Bread mentioned by vballmom. She is so right-it make a huge difference to keep fresh dough in the frig and it lasts for fourteen days. We were throwing out store bought bread all the time and now I can just bake what we need when we feel like it. We don’t even keep crackers anymore.</p>
<p>my kids started complaining that when ever I cook salmon, I always serve it with brown rice and green beans. Guess what they served for dinner the other night in the college cafeteria?
I told my daughter she can’t escape.</p>
<p>Hmmm…let’s see… the regulars</p>
<p>Spaghetti with Italian sausage sauce, steamed broccoli, salad, strawberries
tacos, strawberries for dessert,
shake n bake chicken, baked potato, salad, strawberries
broiled salmon, rice, salad, strawberries
eggs benedict, broiled asparagus, strawberries
huevos rancheros, strawberries
hamburgers, baked beans, salad, strawberries</p>
<p>Ok, those are the current regulars!!! Not very inventive! I do like to cook but when I go to the store, my mind goes blank. I hate shopping for something new so I fall back on a regular. (Sometimes I get creative and add blueberries to the strawberries!)</p>
<p>What’s for dinner tonight? You guessed it! Spaghetti!!</p>
<p>I have come to dread preparing dinner due to the following 3 dietary conflicts: vegetarian D (will eat fish), gluten-intolerent mom, and picky 13yo S. (GF mom also tries to avoid ‘white’ carbs for diet purposes). Besides risotto (a ‘white’ carb) where I take out enough for son before adding mixed seafood for the rest of us, I am at a loss of any meal that satifies all of us, so I feel like I’m running a diner (after working a long day). We try fahita bars, but the set up is a PITA and son ends up dumping 4+ oz of shredded cheese to the fahita and putting in microwave. </p>
<p>Any suggestions would be appreciated!</p>
<p>Things I make often:
- Roast chicken (stuffed with herbs) garlic, shallots and white wine underneath it
- Chicken (or Game hens) with a maple-vinegar glaze from *The Elements of Taste<a href=“great%20book”>/I</a>
- Chicken thighs with apricots from Bittman
- Chicken curry
- Turkey slices cooked like Wiener Schnitzel
- Pork chops with apple cider and apples and onions
- Pork loin stuffed with prunes
- Pork chops with a tomatillo stew
- Butterflied Leg of Lamb marinated with garlic, lemon and rosemary grilled (Bittman)
- Leg of Lamb with red wine, orange juice and herbs (Bon Appetit cookbook)
- Rack of Lamb from Julia Child’s How to Cook (only for special occasions)
- Lamb curry
- White stew (lamb and/or pork) with onions and cream
- London broil on the grill
- London broil with teryaki marinade on the grill
- Roast beef
- Beef stew
- Ropa Vieja
- Meatballs in tomato sauce
- Fish stew (whatever looks good - it always has mussels and squid) with tomatoes, garlic and white wine
- Roast fish topped with pesto, tomatoes and olives
- Trout with dill and lemons baked
- Bluefish grilled
- Catfish with cornmeal
- Fish cooked in parchment with plantains, coconut milk and other julienned vegetables
- Salmon marinated in the dumpling sauce from Chinese takeout
- Salmon plain on the grill
- when time is short ready cooked flavored chicken sausages
- when time is short I use ready made curry sauces
- Brazillian Black beans
- Tomato capreze salad
- Bittman’s spinach (just add lemon and olive oil)
- Bittman’s other spinach (just add coconut milk)
- Stir fried vegetables - what ever looks good - possibly with tofu or seitan
- fresh corn in season
- roasted vegetables
- pan roasted asparagus with variations (from Cook’s Illustrated)</p>
<p>Husband won’t eat bread, pasta, rice or potatoes which makes some things I’d like to make not worth the bother. I think anything worth eating one night is worth eating two nights.</p>
<p>Here are my dinner staples:</p>
<p>Cedar-plank grilled salmon
Oven-baked salmon with lemon pepper and herbs
Potato and salmon pie
Pan-fried salmon
Roasted root veggies (as a side dish)
Roasted cauliflower with a dash of cheese
Grilled chicken (many variations)
Ukrainian Borscht
Chicken soup
Grilled eggplant
Salad made from baby greens with avocado, tomato, red bell pepper, chopped chicken, etc.
Meat-stuffed zucchini
Zucchini stew
Cilantro-lime chicken salad
Omelets with veggies and ham
Grilled filet mignon steaks
Hand-made dumplings (winter comfort foods)
Fajitas
Stuffed peppers
Rice pilafs (chicken or beef)
Grilled halibut
Cedar-plank grilled scallops
Split Pea soup</p>
<p>Our grill gets used year round.</p>
<p>Thanks worknprogress2- I have lots of Delcata squash in my garden and needed an idea for it. </p>
<p>My new favorite recipe I got off of allrecipes.com- Moroccan chicken. I just make rice instead of coucous as h doesn’t like coucous.</p>
<p>Wow, BunsenBurner, great minds think alike :)</p>
<p>My “go-to” list:</p>
<p>Fried zucchini blossoms
Potato soup
Leek soup
French onion soup
Chickpea and chestnut soup
12 bean soup
Chicken soup with escarole and tiny meatballs
Ratatouille
Linguini with fresh tomato sauce
Pasta alla Norma
Barley and mushroom casserole
Vongole origanate
Polenta
Chili
Gnocchi
Orecchiette with rabe
Homemade pesto with trofie (my specialty)
Chicken teriyaki
Roasted salmon with rosemary, onions and lemons
Pistachio crusted sea bass
Beef tenderloin marinated in ginger-soy
Homemade pizza - always my own dough
Grilled scallops
Grilled steak burgers
Breaded chicken cutlets
Roasted chicken with herbs and lemon
Rack of lamb
Grilled tenderloin steaks
Caprese salad
Caesar salad with homemade dressing and fresh croutons</p>
<p>Love watching the cooking shows but get tired of their standard European American fare. Being a “lazy” cook any recipe I use will have been streamlined as much as possible. H and I getting older, eating less, both reverting to more individual comfort foods and with retirement no need to keep a regular meal shedule. Add in the physician, especially cardiologist Indian raised H and we did things differently- he’s lucky I like to cook and the chemist in me saw how to figure out strange foods. Reminds me of back we we first married- each brought different foods to the marriage and in the before kid era we didin’t need to worry about instilling good food/eating habits.</p>
<p>Fusion cooking is the name of the game. Over the years we have had what I thought were family favorites that I dropped when I discovered they had outlived their popularity. Now I cook far less often as recipes and labor involved mean freezing more instead of having a meal plus some leftovers. Never a “meat-potaoes-gravy” family. Rather a “protein-starch-vegetable” way of meal planning. H adds some spices to his favorite vegetable or beans that I don’t like while I eat some old ground beef based comfort foods some nights. </p>
<p>Howcum we finally learn to cook fish and chicken to the tender stage, spice things nicely, etc by the time kids leave the nest and we no longer have people to cook for? Just when everything has become second nature and we have a wide repetoire. Frustrated cook here- need people to eat the product. Interesting though to get down to basics- can have the vegetable with lunch instead of dinner. Or substitue dessert for the starch… Breaking rules is fun.</p>
<p>TV chefs seem to forget that the microwave oven is much better for so many things than the old fashioned ways. They should ban their love of bacon, butter, chorizo and pasta. The pasta because there are too many Italian based dishes around instead of other culture’s uses of wheat. Likewise other spicy sausages. The first two- consider heart healthy dishes.</p>
<p>Off my soapbox. </p>
<p>Thanksgiving dinner always seems to be the same- a fusion of favorite foods with attention only to the traditional foods someone likes. Menu to include favorites: some kind of poultry- baked game hens or Indian spiced chicken (warn guests we don’t plan on turkey since we don’t care that much for it- so son won a fresh turkey last Thanksgiving morning at a Turkey Trot that got added, at least we had a family included who eats it- nothing like figuring out how much a bird weighs and how to cook itfor the evening dinner at noon), some Indian dal (mung) as the proteins. Peas in some dish for H, whole green beans for son and I, likely cauliflower, potatoes and tomatoes Indian dish, canned asparagus, candied yams for H, two kinds of canned cranberry sauce, assorted raw veggie tray with at least black olives and carrots, crescent rolls, basmati rice, vegetarian brown gravy, Stove Top Stuffing (the best part of the turkey was always the stuffing for me), sauteed mushrooms with onions, plus other foods I’ll think of in another month or so. And pumpkin pie with fat free Cool Whip, often a meringue pie, too (a nod to my mother’s pie crust recipe that used one egg for 3 crusts- 2 pumpkin for the holiday and the lemon meringue on Tuesday evening- I use a different crust recipe now). Somehow all of the prep for a meat stuffed turkey went by the wayside, as did the jarred red cabbage served once a year. The jello salad has disappeared recently, too.</p>
<p>Back on the soapbox. Ever wonder how you evolved the family menus? Each parent came from their family foods, plus food has been changing in America as people not only marry outside of their ethnic groups but adapt the foods of others. Leaving home was a good time to abandon foods you disliked as well. Compare foods served with your siblings sometime. You all grew up with the same fare but diverged. My mother was a poor cook. Her spaghetti sauce recipe incuded tomato soup as a main ingredient and her spice shelf basically was salt, pepper and garlic powder. Gone are pork pieces except ham, chuck steaks (the budget friendly steak where the fat and marrow was the delicacy) from my diet. My H’s family never wrote things down- I did after adapting recipes from inlaws and books, a half dozen to a dozen spices are common. Then we visit a different Indian family and discover yet another way to do things.</p>
<p>So many choices, so many ways to cook the same main ingredients and no one to cook for.</p>
<p>soozievt: are we in the same house? with the exception of the veal and the pork dumplings (one we don’t eat, the other I can’t make, but I can order) we have the same menus.</p>
<p>Tonight’s dinner service includes chicken wings…</p>
<p>^^^Adopt me, please?</p>
<p>ellebud…ha ha. I’m not that inventive. Tonight was loin lamb chops. I don’t make veal marsala that often (compared to other meals I listed) but do from time to time. My market doesn’t carry veal that often either. It is easy to make it though (it’s in Joy of Cooking). I don’t do the pork chinese dumplings that often, mostly because I miss my girls who would help me form them like a production line. It is definitely a more involved dinner preparation than the majority of our other meals and a lot to do for two people (and only one of us making them). I did make them recently and I do have them for lunch leftovers. But lots of my dinners are not super involved recipes.</p>
<p>PS…chicken wings on the barbeque with spare rib sauce is for tomorrow night…missed ya by one night.</p>
<p>Also, my entire marriage, kids and all, I have only gone food shopping once a week.</p>
<p>@mathmom…I’m also near NYC, can you come cook for me! I get home at 6:15 and there always seems to be someone that needs to leave at 7pm, so we do whatever seems to be easiest.</p>
<p>Tonight’s dinner was a little different and really good!</p>
<p>I grilled apple chicken brats on the grill…</p>
<p>Microwaved a spaghetti squash and dressed it with salt and pepper and butter…</p>
<p>Took several jalapeno peppers off my pepper plant, split them and filled them with a combo of cream cheese, cheddar, cilantro and a few drops tabasco, rolled them in some cornflakes (egg first) and baked them - they were yummy!</p>
<p>It all was yummy!</p>
<p>oh my, if only I could go to the store once a week! I feel like I am there everyday. I do my main shopping once or twice a week but find myself going daily to get fresh meats. I hate anything frozen and I will not eat deli meat that is older than 2 days! (I blame my Dad for that one…as a kid my mom went everyday to “the pork store” (honest that was the name, it was a german butcher-deli). My Dad grew up in Boston down the street from where his uncle was a butcher so they always had fresh deli and meats…he passed that on I guess.</p>
<p>Wow some of the things you guys cook sound amazing. I just may start a favorite recipe thread (especially since I received some pm’s asking for the hungarian soup and chicken and spinach recipe).</p>
<p>Wis75: Say NO to the stove top stuffing!!! I will be happy to share a homemade stuffing recipe that tastes so much better and doesn’t have the high sodium content. </p>
<p>Thank you all for sharing your ideas and menus. They all sound yummy.</p>
<p>The food threads are reason enough to log onto CC… :)</p>
<p>This is my favorite website that has all sorts of easy, delicious recipes (that work!):</p>
<p>[Our</a> recipe box | PCC Natural Markets](<a href=“Recipes | PCC Community Markets”>Recipes | PCC Community Markets)</p>
<p>There is a large section with gluten-free recipes:</p>
<p>[PCC</a> | Guide to gluten-free cooking](<a href=“http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/gluten_free/recipes.html]PCC”>Recipes | PCC Community Markets)</p>
<p>Let’s see: Bristol Farms (see Rachel Zoe…lots of excellent fresh fish), Gelson’s (valet parking…parking hard to come by here), Trader Joe’s, the Farmer’s Market (the one that’s seen on the Craig Ferguson show) for fresh meat sans antibiotics and hormones…I go two or three times a week total, not per market. Oh, and Pavilions for toilet paper, soaps etc. </p>
<p>So, the chicken on the barbeque…asparagus steamed, baked pototoes baking…pineapple purchased cut up. </p>
<p>Lamb chops or rack of lamb…excellent and easy. Husband loves it, kids won’t touch it.</p>
<p>…oh, I forgot the cheese store that I walk to once every two weeks.</p>