Hello! I’m staying up late tonight because I’m cranky about going to bed. I’ll only have myself to blame tomorrow when I’m cranky about getting up, but such is life.
We’ve been experimenting some with recipes these past couple of weeks. I made some fancier foods and some regular recipes. This week is kind of a terrible week for food pictures, as the Husband’s job is moving buildings and everything is apparently a mess. I never know if he will actually be home for dinner or not. I’ll start with the fancy foods and then give you a quick run down of the regulars.
Probably the fanciest meal we had was duck! We had potatoes and swiss chard cooked in the duck fat as a side, as well as some kind of fruit that I can’t remember.
I followed this method from The Kitchn for cooking the recipe, just added the Swiss chard to the potatoes. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-cook-duck-breast-254046
I like their recipes as they are pretty uncomplicated and easy to follow. I was nervous, but I think I did do a fairly good job on cooking it.
We also had a fondue date night a few weeks ago and watched Star Wars. A cheesy dinner with a cheesy movie was perfect for us. Fancy drooled all over our feet and attempted big puppy dog eyes, but alas, no fondue was provided. Cheese is life to Fancy.
It was really rich and delicious. I shared the plate of fondue dippers in the Blue Plate Special photos, but here it is again.
It was a fun dinner. We had butterkase, sharp cheddar, and fontina cheeses in the fondue. I heavily modified a recipe from the Melting Pot. I used the leftover fondue to make mac and cheese which was also delicious.
Apparently I have been using my flamingo pink Fiestaware a lot lately. I should probably do a regular color rotation for the dishes. 🙂
Here’s the pink plate again, this time with a Valentine’s Day dinner of roasted chicken, stuffing, and buttery herbed carrots. I used the herb butter I made with garden herbs in all three items. The stuffing is Stove Top. The Husband likes it, so I do occasionally make it. It’s growing on me a little.
Here’s another fancy dish on the pink plate. 🙂 This one is a lamb shoulder chop with Cajun roasted potatoes and roasted zucchini for me. The Husband had a salad.
It was pretty decent, although a bit fatty for me, of course. The lamb was seasoned with garlic and rosemary. I used garlic, oregano, salt, pepper, and olive oil on the zucchini and Cajun seasoning on the potatoes. Here’s the recipe for the chops. https://www.craftbeering.com/lamb-shoulder-chops-recipe/
I ended up frying the rest of the potatoes for breakfast the next morning. They were delicious.
I had them with eggs and sage chicken sausages. It was a good breakfast.
We’ve been pretty good about using leftovers for the most part. I made taco meat for taco salad one weeknight and we used the leftover meat for nachos on Saturday for lunch.
I added beans that I cooked down with lime juice, cumin, garlic, cilantro, and chili powder to mine and it was yummy! I also used fritos in my salad. I think the Husband used tortilla chips. Here are the nachos from the weekend.
We had delicious sandwiches for lunch one day too. When our toaster finally only toasted things properly on Thursdays, we decided to get rid of it and the Husband wanted to get a toaster oven so he could have toasted sandwiches. I do enjoy them as well.
I like them even better with homemade dilly beans!
We have also had some staple meals: mushroom cream pasta, chicken pot pie, and chef’s salad.
And of course, some baking. I made cupcakes from a box, but used a super fancy frosting recipe with chocolate marscapone cheese to make up for the box mix. We had them for dessert for my MIL’s birthday. They weren’t really interesting to photograph though. I thought I had saved the frosting link, but it appears that I haven’t actually done that. Whoops!
Tonight we had spicy wonton soup, since the Husband is starting to get sick. I used the wontons from Costco, plus a bunch of spices, including turmeric, white pepper, ginger, garlic, 5 spice powder, soy sauce, fish sauce, spicy chili oil, mushrooms, green onions, and carrots. It was lovely and spicy.
We’re supposed to get lots of snow tomorrow, so I’m not sure if I will end up at work or not. I haven’t had many cancellations yet, but that may change with the weather in the morning. I’m torn between wanting to get paid and seeing clients and staying home to bake, sew, and snuggle the dog. I’ll leave you with a picture of a snuggly Fancy to help you guess which option is winning. 😉
Happy Snuggling and Good Night!
