Meat and Potatoes

My guys are meat and potatoes men, so that's always a sure hit for dinner. These are some recent combinations. (Please don't nag me about too much red meat -- I serve a lot of chicken and seafood, too, but this is a meaty post.)

Steak (on sale that week) and loaded baked potatoes. Even my brown thumb has not managed to destroy the chives growing in my garden. They are descendants from a chive plant I brought here in 1988. I just hate being offered "chives" in a restaurant, only to find out they are green onions aka scallions. (Oh, please, click that link. You'll be happy you did.) There's a difference! The steak's not really blackened, it just looks that way. Maybe the HH was a little zealous with the grill pan, but it was still medium-rare inside.


Frank's favorite meal, pork chops! He mixes his potatoes and peas together. Ernest prefers the well of souls gravy.

But sometimes I try to mix it up. Here we have seared (sort of) ahi tuna and rice pilaf. Tuna is so steaky, it falls into my meat category. I love making rice pilaf, throwing in all sorts of odd bits of vegetables to use them up, and the crew likes it almost as much as potatoes.

Wait a minute! I didn't cook this! This was my meal at Ernest's birthday dinner. Buffalo New York Steak. It was good! But I know chives. Chives are a friend of mine. Scallions, you're no chives.

Here's another restaurant meal sneaking in. Estofado. Mmmmm. A beefy stew with a cinnamon flavor. Someone posted a recipe for it, and now I don't remember where I saw it.


Recently, a batch of ginormous burgers. The bottomless pit Ernest ate the whole thing...I ate about half of one.

And lamb. Baaaaaaa. The leftovers make a great shepherd's pie.



What's cooking at your house?

Pasta e fagioli

A great new dish I tried recently was Pasta e Fagioli, from the Half-Assed Kitchen.


Easy and delicious. We are meat lovers, so we did add Italian sausage. The second time I made it, I threw in some zucchini. And look how cute the beans are, all nestled up into the little shells!

Lamburgers!

I've been thinking of starting a food blog, not because I have that many original recipes to share, but just to document what I feel is a really massive achievement: cooking dinner almost every single night. Yes, let's hear it for me!

Sunday night's dinner turned out to be one of the best I'd ever made. Oh, my gosh. One bite, and I said, "This is the most delicious thing I've ever made. I would PAY to eat this in a restaurant!"

I've had a yen for Greek food lately, so when I saw this recipe I had to try it. Grilled Lamb Burgers, or as I call it, Lamburgers. I found the recipe in the paper, but I can't link to it. (If you click on the picture, then click again, it will enlarge enough to read it.) I'll type out MY version at the end of the post.



I do have a few comments on what I did.

Ground lamb at the farmer's market is ex$$$$pensive but delicious! I used about 1 3/4 lbs, and made the patties extra large, so that with shrinkage (not that kind) they would still fill out the whole bun.


Because I used more meat, I also increased the other ingredients semi-proportionately. I'm not a real measury kind of cook. Also, I used onion powder because I really don't like onion chunks in a burger. I cooked them in the frying pan, not on a grill. Because I don't have a grill. Use a meat thermometer. The meat is so tender that it will still feel quite soft when it is done. I topped them with avocado, grilled onions, arugula, and a decadently delicious smoked cheddar from the farmer's market.

Doesn't that look wonderful?


I served them with homemade cole slaw and tater tots. Yes, tots. We love tots. (Which explains why there was so little ketchup left for the next night's dinner.)

1 3/4 lbs. ground lamb (try it with hamburger, tell me what happens!)
zest of one lemon (the juice went into my coleslaw)
approx. 4 tbl. fresh mint leaves, finely chopped (I think basil would be good, too)
approx. 4 tbl. fresh parsley, finely chopped (I like the flat leaf kind)
1/2 tbl. dried oregano (or fresh, if you have it)
2 cloves garlic, pulverized with your garlic press
2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 tsp honey
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper

Toppings:
4 good-quality larger hamburger buns, toasted
cheddar cheese, enough slices to cover each burger
spicy arugula, or any other greens or lettuce
sliced avocado
grilled onions (mine weren't quite "caramelized")
ketchup (yes, we're a ketchup house, not a catsup house)

Mix up the meat and seasonings, form into patties, cook...you can figure out the rest.

Yum.

Frank's Fruit Fest

Frank's been scavenging in my fruit bowl a lot! He made a great smoothie the other night.

One apple (Gala).



One pear (Bosc. Wow, pears have their own website).

("Mom, should I peel them?" I said yes. With my ultra-sharp new peeler.)



Six strawberries.

Orange juice.



Blend.

Enjoy. That's all that was left, before I remembered to take the picture. It was delicious.


Ernest tried this today and left the apple unpeeled. Still delish. I love to see my sons creating in the kitchen.

Smalltown Mom's Leftover Challenge

In these financially frustrating times, people are stretching the food dollar ever tighter (ever more tightly? -- someone correct my grammar here because I hate it when I'm wrong.) One way is the pantry challenge. Karen at From My Noodle explained it over a year ago. Even Bossy is doing it now.

My personal challenge is LEFTOVERS. They pile up in the refrigerator. No one is willing to eat them unless I haul them out. Sometimes I call it buffet night and lay everything out on the counter for my men to forage.

Other times I try to get creative.

Tuesday night I used up these leftovers: 1/2 an onion, steak-some rather tough london broil, red wine sauce (from the steak), and chili beans. And with the addition of a few things from the pantry, made a batch of pretty good chili. And to top it off, I found 4 leftover biscuits! That's a total of 5 leftovers used.

Combining 5 leftovers at once (yes, the biscuits count!) might be a new record for me as far as numbers go. Although my personal best in taste will always be my chicken soup.

But I need new ideas.

What do you do with a pork chop? Oh, wait, give it to Frank. He will gladly gnaw on a leftover pork chop as a snack.

My leftover dilemma has grown worse as Frank has grown more independent. Sometimes he's here for dinner, sometimes he's not. So I often have unexpected leftovers.

The other night there was some salmon. And I couldn't bear to throw it away, but no one's going to eat it and I don't know what to do with it. That hurts.

What's your favorite thing to do with leftovers? Tell me. Be Creative. I need ideas!