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Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice
A couple of years ago I went through a crock pot phase. I got all excited about making freezer meals and cooking them in the crock pot while I was at work and thought I had solved all my weeknight cooking problems. It didn’t work out so well for me. First, I’m gone too long for most crock pot dishes and even on low with a timer (that turns it to warm), most of my meat was way over cooked. Second, the meat started to get a funny taste that I can’t really put my finger on, but I just didn’t like it. Seemed like everything I put in the…
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Asian Pork Tenderloin with Lemon Ginger Rice and Sesame Green Beans
I’ve been cooking a lot this week, but haven’t had the time to post… so I’ll be trying to catch up this weekend. With Blake being home in the evenings now, I was able to come up with some new recipes. One of the dinners from this week was a grilled Asian pork tenderloin that I served over lemon jasmine rice with sesame green beans. It was a clean-your-plate kind of meal – delish! Asian Pork Tenderloin 1 package of 2 pork tenderloins (about 1 1/2 – 2 lbs total) 1/4 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup honey 1/4 cup olive oil 1 tbsp sesame oil 1 tbsp minced fresh ginger…
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One Pot Stovetop Chicken and Yellow Rice
Ever since I started avoiding MSG in my food, yellow rice has pretty much been off limits. But my favorite variety of chicken and rice is chicken and yellow rice. So I decided to try to make it from scratch, which required me to work with a foreign ingredient – saffron. I was very proud of my small-town Publix for actually carrying it (in the ethnic section near the Spanish and Mexican foods). I made a “saffron tea” with some of the chicken stock, and it worked like a charm – yellow rice the natural way. This turned out really good and was exactly what I’ve been craving. If I…
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Chicken and Rice Soup with Lemon
Today is my second day home with sick kiddos. They’ve been sick with the flu, but I’m happy to report they are starting to feel better! I made this soup for lunch today in hopes it would aid in the “feel better” efforts and both boys enjoyed it. My husband (the real chef) first introduced me to chicken soup with lemon, which at first I thought was a weird combination. Lemon in soup?? That is, until I tried it. I was wrong, he was right (I don’t say this often), and the soup was darn good. So when I asked him this morning for some details on how he made…
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Mexican Shrimp with Cilantro Lime Rice
Last night for dinner, I wanted to try something new with shrimp. My go-to with shrimp is pasta or scampi, but I was wanting my weekly Mexican fix. What to do, what to do… So I decided on shrimp with Mexican seasoning, sautéed with black beans, corn, salsa, lime juice and cilantro. I served it on top of copy-cat Chipotle cilantro lime rice. If I haven’t mentioned before, I LOVE Chipotle – one of my favorite places to eat. Good quality food, reasonable prices, and right across the street from my office makes it good and dangerous. But I digress. This meal qualifies for the 30-minute designation, so it’s definitely…
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The Taco Night Superstar: Spanish Rice
I’m a sides kinda girl – sure the main course can be great, but I love a good side dish! (Just wait until Thanksgiving!!) So tonight I planned to make tacos and I thought all day about what else I could make to go with it. I decided I’d try to make Spanish rice (an old time favorite of mine). Although I had never made this from scratch before, I am pleased to say that my experiment turned out delicious! This is a really simple recipe and cooked while I was making the taco meat, so it definitely qualifies as weeknight-worthy. If I had planned ahead, I would have added…
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(Almost) Cube Steak with Gravy
So I’ve actually never made cube steak… or if I have, it was so unmemorable that I have forgotten. But it’s one of those things that I have aspired to make well. So tonight I decided to give it a try. Only problem, I didn’t actually have “cubed steak” – but I did have ground beef; really, really awesome organic ground beef from Costco that is the best tasting ground beef I have ever, ever had, hands down. So I decided to improvise. I figured that if I made my ground beef into thin enough patties, and then treated it just like cube steak, it would work. Well, it did…
