What's for dinner?

Oh the season of abundance is starting for us! - in a small way at least.

Monday - oven fried chicken with steamed-n-buttered garden asparagus given to us by my best friend. Tuesday DH had a doctor's appt. so he ate out, while I fixed a yummy leftover bowl of shredded chicken, asparagus, and leftover rice-n-peppers, all dressed with soy sauce. And today was taco salad, made with store-bought romaine mixed with fresh garden spinach (also given to us by best friend).

On tap for tomorrow is ham and bean soup, full of veggies. And re: the season of abundance, I need to head out to the garden in a little bit to pick our first batch of snow peas, they're ready to pick, so either lo mein or chow mein Friday. And picked today the first zucchini - will probably bread and fry it, just don't know when.

Getting excited, and feeling very fortunate, for the start of garden produce in our area.

Accidental chilli. As in I had some ground beef in the freezer I thought I'd fry up but of course it had clumped together with much more ground beef (it was portions on a supermarket beef tray thing). So I have a bit over a pound of beef all clumped together I need to find a use for fast. So I made chilli only I found out the chilli power had gone moldy, which I usually use, no I did not know that could happen either (I did have real chillis - fairly mild ones - Serranos or Jalapenos I think). So I added a massive amount of cumun since I couldn't find much else in terms of proper spices and then later I added some cajun spice (parprika, black pepper, garlic, onion powder, chili powder, oregano, cumin) as I tasted it and figure it might work. So it came out fairly close. But pretty gritty, don't know if that's just from the massive amount of spices (but again mostly mild ones like cumin) or the canned beans disintegrating and poorly rinsed or pink slime or what (actually the beef should be higher quality than that but ... :) ). At least it tastes like chilli, when I first started making "chilli" a few years ago (by guesswork) I kept making meat spaghetti sauce instead, which was edible even without pasta but ... it wasn't chilli.

Turkey! It is not quite 10 a.m. and the turkey is almost done! Busy day, but wanted to cook this. Should provide an abundance of leftovers for the freezer or other meals this week. Smells soooo good!!!

Monday: dirty rice w/fried (garden) zucchini on the side. My first try at homemade dirty rice - it turned out pretty good.
Tuesday: ordered out, unfortunately. DH just hasn't been in the mood to cook on my "work days" lately. And he was busy.
Today: beef chow mein, using garden snow peas. Oh my the fresh snow peas are superb!
Tomorrow: another 'work day" for me, so I made up some tuna salad for sandwiches (knowing DH still isn't in the mood for food preparation). We'll have along with plain sliced garden cucumber slices - which I picked fresh this evening.

Working hard on using the garden produce in my menus. It's gonna get more complicated in a couple of weeks. :)

Last night I made Homey Chicken Stew from the Slow Cooker Revolution by America's Test Kitchen. Just delicious! I have made several dishes from this cookbook and they have all been very good. Leftovers tonight.

Last night I made something from "Taste of Home" magazine. A fair amount of their recipes are "Church Lady" recipes......but this one wasn't too bad. It called for tortellini, but all I had was cheese filled frozen ravioli. I cooked that.
In another pan, I sliced up a couple Italian chicken sausages and sauteed them with onions and garlic. When they were soft, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a whole bunch of fresh spinach. When the spinach was wilted, I added 4 oz of neufchatel cream cheese. I drained the ravioli and added the others to it. It was very yummy! I served it with a side of fresh watermelon/grapes/blueberries and pineapple.

Cathy: my kinda cooking. Sounds wondermous, with healthy ingredients offsetting the (???) unhealthy ones. I would put spinach in most everything I cook if DH would allow it.....

Making eggplant ragout (a greek cookbook - typical Mediterranean: eggplant, onions, garlic, tomatoes, *LOTS* of olive oil, and parsley). Much easier than other eggplant recipes (than ratatouille ha :)) and I remember it was quite good. Also made a cucumber salad. Ok that's the cooking I did this week. Dinner: tonight is fasting, last night ate way too much lunch so not hungry, Tuesday: sage and onion fried potatoes. Monday: baked potato with chili and sour cream. Yes I've still got that accidental chilli - may just freeze now, while it's still good (although my freezer is too full as is).

Oh and the recipe above had me at chicken sausages. Chicken sausages mmm (granted I buy the organic ones and they cost it, and processed meat isn't healthy - but mmmm chicken sausages...)

Last night, I made one of our staple dishes when I can't think of anything else - tuna nicoise salad - tiny red potatos, green beans, tomatos, boiled eggs, anchovies, capers and black olives on a bed of romaine with home made vinaigrette. I recently discovered tuna in a glass jar and it is decidely tastier than canned for dishes like this. Expensive though.

A rare baked potato with butter, cottage cheese, and scallions. Lychee iced tea.