So...whats for dinner?

Valstim52

Summer is in full swing in NC. Dinner last night was grilled boneless chops with a brandy cream sauce. Sauteed baby carrots, baked sweet potato and a tossed salad. Tonite? who knows. ideas?

susan_02143

Last night's meal of NYStrip steaks on the grill, Potatoes Dauphinoise, and green salad with topping bar was a great success. I assume that my friends will know what to do with the leftovers. We are back home, getting ready for tomorrow's infusion and arrival of some guests. This time from the Philippines. I can feel that my potassium is too low, so I will make a sweet potato Massaman curry again even though it is about 96º in my kitchen. I had also planned to make some arrival treats, but don't think that I want to turn on the oven today. First thing we did after getting home was nap. Neither of us slept well on that mattress. We never do, but the company is well worth it. I assume the kinks in my necks and the soreness in my lower back will get bette quickly.

Today is Lacey's birthday.

SpecialK

Happy birthday to lacey!
Yay!

Happy Anniversary to mommy and her DH! Hope you get a dinner out!

Just finished cooking stuff for a friend who I super busy at work, her DH is an airline pilot so is never home, and she is trying to lose some weight. Hard to cook and shop for one - so I killed a few birds with one stone and cooked for her and DH and I. Made broccoli/bacon/dried cran/slivered almond salad, celery/green apple/walnut salad dressed with a honey and Dijon vinaigrette, turkey and kidney bean enchiladas with quinoa, a southwest salad, Greek salad, strawberry/pecan/chicken salad with poppyseed dressing and goat cheese, frittata with yellow squash and kale, and a curried chicken and rice/quinoa salad with peppers and green olives and cashews. Also made some snack bags of sweet and spicy popcorn and trail mix.

Not sure what is for dinner because I am cooked out! I have some leftover roasted chicken, so maybe that with dilled green beans and red potatoes.

susan - for potassium can you handle banana pudding with extra sliced bananas?

MinusTwo

Finally got to the store yesterday & got celery & green onions, only to discover that most of the red potatoes in the bag had squished out. I'd forgotten the awful smell.

Good heaven's Special. I'm trying to gear up for making potato salad at the same time I'm spiralizing zucchini & yellow squash at the same time as sauteing some spinach that needs to be used AND I've been putting it off. Now I really feel like a wimp.

Yes, I bought a couple of bananas yesterday too. Magnesium supplements don't seem to be solving the cramps in my calves & feet, so I'll add the potassium.

Susan - good luck with the infusion tomorrow.

Val - I'd love your recipe for brandy cream sauce. I make it a different way each time and I still haven't been able to replicate the original meal that I loved.

M0mmyof3

Me too. Too dang hot to cook!!!!

susan_02143

I am not going the banana route. It doesn't give you all that much; certainly not more than artichokes or sweet potatoes. And it introduces a ton of sugar into my diet. In general, I find bananas cloyingly sweet and don't really eat them at all. Of course, if they are still a bit green then they aren't so sweet, but then they taste green. Picky! Picky!

:-)

*susan*

auntienance

Happy birthday Lacey - miss you much!

Sandy, so very sorry about your friend. Hope you have some happy memories there.

When it rains it pours as they say (except no actual rain here for several weeks!). My oven is putting out a lot of carbon. I'm thinking (hoping) it's an adjustment and am awaiting a service call this week. On top of that, our a/c has decided not to work this, the hottest day of the year so far. Wonderful. Service call in for that too. Cooking will be on the grill, so nothing too fancy. I have half of a small chicken brining in buttermilk. Sides will be broccoli and some reheated sliced potatoes sprinkled with a little cheese.

In spite of the mini drought, the garden is cranking along. I spotted several small zukes and tiny yellow squash today and I have a single tomato blushing. The pepper plants do not look great - somewhat stunted with too small leaves and few blooms. I need to get the soil tested in that bed. Yesterday there were two garter snakes in the pond, a small groundhog and a large raccoon in the fenced yard and two deer laying under the apple trees. Wild Kingdom here.

illimae

Tonight it's a big salad for me, 5 kinds of lettuce, red cabbage, radishes, green/red onions and some leftover grilled chicken with a little buttermilk ranch.

M0mmyof3

Dinner was at a Chinese buffet

MinusTwo

Mommy - happy anniversary. Happy break from cooking.

Dinner was FINALLY pork medallions in brandy cream sauce. Pumpernickel tomorrow. I felt so guilty after all of Special's yummy dishes. While I was sauteing the mushrooms & onions & preparing the brandy cream sauce, I boiled potatoes & eggs, cut up onions & celery (and prepped the rest of the celery in nice sticks for the rest of the week) sprialized 3 zucchini, then 2 large yellow squash, made a potato salad, Now I have fresh food ready for easy prep the rest of the week.

Susan - Pumpernickel is not easy to find in Houston. Sometimes Central Market has home made bagels, but it's not on a schedule. They usually do have bread. There's one Einstein Bagel shop that has them once a week... sometimes. Neither of those are anywhere close to me. Sigh.

Waiting impatiently for Olathe corn. I know it's probably not until July, but I can already taste it.

MinusTwo

I read somewhere this week that you should not use both onion & garlic in the same sauce. The comment was they they sort of cancel each other out and you don't taste either. I've never heard that before, and I often mix them.

What's the verdict from the table? I wish April hadn't taken a break since I know she makes gravy often.

susan_02143

Minus, I think that is just foolish talk unless you are talking about a sub-sect of Indians who don't eat either due to their religious beliefs. We can't get very good rye bread varieties either which is why I make my own. *susan*

susan_02143

Joyce,

It is great to have you back around the kitchen table. So wonderful that you will get to see RVing's children, and be part of the village that is ready to welcome a new baby. I did cook tonight. And as Mr. SMT said as we tried to tuck into a delicious Massaman Curry, "I just feel too punky to eat." We both did. Maybe I can eat a bit of peanut butter or some pretzels later, but for right now, my office is still well over 95º which makes me feel, well, punky.

Susan

SpecialK

minus - keep in mind that I was a caterer, you are not a wimp! I am used to multi-tasking!

joycek - yay for the baby shower, and how exciting! Have you still kept in touch with Michelle's husband as well? I should make an east coast trip and come say hi when you return to FL!

susan - how about avocadoes, squashes, or white beans?

ChiSandy

Jains don’t eat any vegetable that must be pulled from the earth, and that includes roots, bulbs and all the alliums (onion, garlic, scallions). They can eat leaves and trimmed shoots (such as snipped chives).

Tonight I’m heating a cast-iron skillet on the grill till it gets screaming hot. (NOT gonna fire up my oven, not in 97-degree weather). Will grill some corn (maybe make some chili-lime butter for it), nuke some broccolini and then briefly char it on the grill. Maybe finish the heirloom tomato I cut for my sandwich, along with some basil (Gordy hates raw tomatoes, for some reason. I can’t stomach bananas except as Foster. Go figure).

SpecialK

chisandy - my DH has a tomato aversion also, big time - only raw, he loves cooked tomatoes in marinara or chili. DS has the banana issue even though he at them often as a baby.

auntienance

Joyce, forgot to say welcome back!

Not much dinner for me tonight - no appetite again. DH had a carryout pizza. Maybe tomorrow . . .

ChiSandy

My mom used to tell me that I would throw up bananas in any way, shape or form (raw mashed, strained, reconstituted flakes) when I was a baby. The smell reminds me of drying oil-based paint (which also makes me retch). I can taste them in a smoothie, so I insist any smoothies I order be made without bananas—I either get the side-eye as if I’m nuts, or am refused outright. I detest banana bread and banana cream pie. I like bananas Foster, or broiled with a little cinnamon & sweetener. That’s the only way I can stand them. I saw an episode of VICE a few weeks ago about a banana blight called “Panama Disease” that is spreading like wildfire across plantations in the Philippines. Apparently, bananas reproduce asexually, via grafting. Therefore, every banana in a particular plantation is an exact clone of all the others of that species. And there is only one commercially grown mass-market cultivar: the Cavendish. It is fairly hardy, can be picked while green and ripened in transit. Unfortunately, it is inferior in texture and taste to its commercially-grown predecessor, the Gros Michel, which was wiped out by Panama Disease. (Had I ever tasted one of those—which died out before I was born—I might not have had an aversion).

carolehalston

Goodness! My mouth is watering as I catch up on posts! What a banquet of meals you all have been enjoying.

We had a delicious ribeye one night. The next night was hot dogs with a slaw made with purple cabbage and diced apple. Last night was a hot dish cooked in the slow cooker. Ground grass-fed beef, potatoes, carrots, peas. Side was a romaine salad with additions. A perfect meal for getting home at 5:30 following a round of golf.

Tonight we plan to eat at La Pasta in Dorset after the WW meeting in Walker, weather permitting. It has been raining all morning.

april485

My daughter and her man are staying with us for a few days so tonight I had to make something easy but yummy. Eggplant fries and paninis tonight. I think mine will be fresh mozzarella (or smoked) with grilled chicken, carmelized onion/bacon jam (which I made a while ago and have some frozen) and a tomato saffron aoli. I made up a aoli and it is really good on sandwiches and other things. I just make a standard mayo in my food processor and add some chopped up san marzano tomatoes and a few threads of saffron that have been "bloomed" in a little bit of warm water or chicken broth. Really good.

Eggplant fries are exactly what they sound like. Sticks of eggplant dipped in flour, egg and panko that I season with herbs and parmesan cheese and then fry them. I tried baking them but, eh, not as good. I serve with my marinara to dip them in after dusting them with more parm when they are really hot so it melts on them. Hubby will get regular fries (that I make in the oven) because he hates eggplant...hard to believe, but true!

Nice to "see" everyone. I have not been on in a while so have to catch up with the thread! off to read...

SpecialK

april - I just made zucchini fries the same way the other night! I have had them out but not made them at home, had excess zucchini that needed to be used so I experimented! Did exactly the same as you described, and they were yum! I am with your DH on the eggplant tho...

ChiSandy

We enjoyed that grass-fed ribeye last night, cooked in a cast-iron skillet which I’d preheated on the closed grill. (No way was I gonna heat my oven to 500 on such a hot night). Grilled corn, and sauteed broccolini. The steak turned out every bit as good as if on the stovetop, and the pan was easy to clean and maintain its seasoning.

Tonight, will pan-sear some fresh Alaskan halibut, topped with pineapple salsa and accompanied by julienned sauteed sweet peppers. Maybe also some heirloom tomato & basil with just a little EVOO & sea salt. We’re expecting rain tonight (not the storms the exurbs will be getting), for which my lawn and the perennial herbs & berries will be very grateful.

susan_02143

Dinner was those mini-meatloaf that I made several months ago, mashed potatoes [used HEAVY cream and real butter[, plus some peas. You know... the meatloaf are not good. I have no idea what Cook's Illustrated was thinking with this recipe, but it just aint' good eats. The potatoes, on the other hand, were wonderful.

Potassium and Sodium were just in the normal range. I lost another 4 pounds, but no one mentioned this at all. One of my BCO buddies came and chatted during my infusion which was a ton of fun. Scans in a month. Dr. C wants to make sure that this is working before burdening my body with toxins. Who can blame her? Cycle 4 has begun.

*susan*

SpecialK

susan - yay for more potassium in your mashed potatoes - sorry about your meatloaf though. Glad you got a visit in with a friend and I hope the heavy cream and butter can help you hold on to some weight.

CeliaC

We had food trucks at the office today. Pulled Pork BBQ with Sauce and homemade Mac-n-Cheese - enough for lunch and dinner, too! They also had some yummy looking coleslaw, but it had celery seed in it, so unable to partake due to diverticulosis. Will have to augment with some veggies tonight.

SpecialK

celia - homemade mac 'n cheese is my kryptonite - enjoy for me!

M0mmyof3

Tonight is leftover Hot Dish, salad and garlic bread

ChiSandy

Found myself up at Old Orchard mall last night to buy some more Nespresso capsules, and a combo watch-phone charger at the Apple Store. It was 1/2 price takeout Tuesday at Buffalo Wild Wings near where I’d parked, so BWW (3 each mild & “Asian Zing,” like Korean) and celery sticks was my dinner. Will make the halibut tonight after my support group meeting.

eric95us

I probably won't do any baking inside on Tuesday...the weather forecasters are expecting it to reach 120F (almost 50C)......with a good chance of being even hotter

This local TV weather forecast was from a couple if years ago, but this time year, it's still funny.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iXuc7SAyk2s

susan_02143

Eric, We made it to 98º yesterday in a town without central A/C in most buildings. Too bloody hot.

Turns out my daughter likes rompers for Olivia. First I had to learn what a romper was, and then find a pattern. Here are the results:

Dinner is leftover Massaman curry. Not wildly excited about this menu, but it is made and reheats well. I have already made bagels twice today and a banana bread. Easy sounded pretty good.

*susan*