Currently hungry for more fruit smoothie, but I’ll hold off until the morning. I used the last of my yogurt tonight. We had waffles, chicken breakfast sausage, and a fruit smoothie with oatmilk, yogurt, and berries. The Husband likes a little bit of sweetener in his smoothies, so I added a tablespoon or so of one of the simple syrups in my fridge. I had whipped cream and maple syrup on mine.

I tried a new breakfast recipe as well and discovered that my stomach gets super duper rumbly if I eat that much dairy right away, so may not make it again. It was a breakfast cheesecake cup!

I just went to link to the recipe and the website said the account had been suspended, but basically it’s a block of softened cream cheese, ricotta cheese, and yogurt. Blend them together, add sweetener and flavoring of your choice and a crust or granola on the bottom. This is it with plum cardamom jam. It was alright, but I think I might try another recipe. I would also add some more protein powder to these, if I was to make them again. They didn’t quite have the staying power I needed.

Speaking of staying power, my younger brother had been inspiring me to eat more protein with breakfast. I have made eggs a couple of time along with some muffins. I can’t always eat eggs for breakfast, occasionally they make me really sick.

We had a special weekend treat of baked banana bread donuts with chocolate glaze. They obviously needed sprinkles! I really want to make a bunch of baked goods with sprinkles and experiment with pictures of them for practice. It would be super cute, I think! Just look at how yummy these donuts look.

I used 5 Spice sugar in them for an extra twist and they were yummy. Very subtly spiced. The Brother approved, although the Husband didn’t eat them. He doesn’t like bananas.

Speaking of the Brother, we had some tasty dinners while the Husband was out of town for business. I think they were all Middle Eastern or Indian based foods and oh man… First up is beef kafta over pearl couscous and a cucumber tomato parsley salad. The salad had Za’atar spice in it. All the components were yummy!

He made falafel as well one night and they were so light and delicious. We had them with another tomato cucumber and herb salad. The recipe was apparently terrible and seemed to leave out some steps. It was from The Wizard’s Cookbook which the Husband recently bought me.

Don’t they look scrumptious? In the same cookbook, there was a recipe for “Red Dragon Inn Spicy Broth” and it was basically a curry coconut broth.

We had it with cooperatively made naan breads. Gosh, I’m going to miss having an extra cook in the house! The following picture should help explain why.

When I came home the next day, he was in the kitchen heating up naan, having cooked up some chicken, reduced the curry soup into a sauce and chopped up more romaine and parsley. I added yogurt on mine. It was so comforting and yummy! I will definitely make it again. Now that the Husband is traveling occasionally, I’m starting to plan more meals that he doesn’t like.

More Brother made meals included Blackberry BBQ beef ribs and Spanish Spiced chicken. They were both excellent.

The salad has a couple garden tomatoes and arugula in it.

I don’t have pictures of it, but the boys made themselves pork a couple of times. I had dahl and rice one night (Thanks Jeanne!) and made this ridiculously delicious chickpea curry that I would know like to eat about once a week.

The curry had chickepeas, butternut squash, carrots, green onions, and spicy, spicy fresh cayenne peppers from the garden. I had, I think, five little slices in the whole pot and had to pull two of them back out. It was making my nose run!

We’ve had some delicious favorites, pasta salad, chicken pot pie over noodles, and caprese salad with garden tomatoes and basil.

Also some delicious desserts. This is the strawberry cheesecake pie that I made for our anniversary. Side note, the Husband had stuck with me for 8(!) years! Well, married years, we were together for about five years before that too. I think he sticks around for the food mainly. 😉

I experimented with a no bake cheesecake as well. We tried chocolate and key lime flavors. We ate the key lime before I could take a picture, but it had toasted coconut on top.

I made cookies to take to work with me and shared with the CNA class that shares the other side of our building. They made me a picture Thank you with all of them holding cookies. 🙂 I was so embarrassed. I just wanted to me the cookie fairy! I made white chocolate lime coconut and chili chocolate cookies. Both were excellent! The lime cookies came from a Food Network insert and the chili chocolate cookies were here: https://localmilkblog.com/2013/03/salted-spicy-double-chocolate-chili-cookies.html

They were well received. The Brother had to sample many, but I think decided the lime cookies were his favorite.

Homemade pizza made an appearance. This time it had turkey Italian Sausage, mushrooms, and onions. I made a quick red sauce and actually managed to cook the dough for long enough this time.

I didn’t go too crazy for Shark Week this week. I only made three themed meals and two more shark themed clothing items. Well, five, if you count masks separately, I guess.

We did have Shark fin quesadillas and taco salad on Monday.

We had Shrimp Scampi on our actual anniversary.

And I had homemade arugula parsley pesto over shark themed noodles.

Oh my goodness, was the pesto good! I’m planning on making spinach and herb pesto tomorrow and freezing it all in tiny jars so I can pull it out in the winter and eat it when missing green things. I really enjoyed the pepperiness of the arugula. I can credit my friend K with helping me figure out that I like pesto. She sent us home the last time we visited with a couple of jars of different kinds of pesto and inspired me to make my own.

I think that’s all so far. I may be making an octopus cake for the end of Shark Week tomorrow, possibly a marble bundt cake. Also, I need ideas to use up the enormous thing of ricotta in my fridge. One of my planned recipes is cannoli filling ice cream. It looks really good, but I’ll have to make some other things too. I have a ricotta pancakes recipe too, so maybe I’ll try that. Wish me luck and drop me recipes if you have them!