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What's for dinner?


rodentraiser

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 I left refried beans to cook in the crock pot while I went in for the surgery so dinner tonight was a couple tostadas. Lisa very kindly stopped by my Safeway on the way home today so I could pick up my prescriptions and I grabbed a couple bottles of Gatorade and a bag of chips at the same time. So that will be the rest of supper. I wish I had grabbed apples instead of chips, but maybe I can get some apples on Monday or Tuesday.

 

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The other day I took a can of crescent roll dough and laid the pieces out in an octagon on a baking sheet, skinny points in, and sprinkled them with sugar & cinnamon; then I cored, peeled and sliced an apple, dumped the pieces onto the crescent roll dough and sprinkled them with some more cinnamon and sugar pulled the edges of the dough together over the top and baked it and we at half of it with breakfast and the rest of it with supper.

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Holly, your apple crisp sounds delicious.

We went to the local Mexican restaurant last night instead of cooking the tilapia. I'd forgotten why we don't go there much -- they cook with enormous amounts of salt. Woke up this morning feeling dehydrated and weighing a pound and a half more than yesterday, which I'm sure is retained water from the salt. 

Looking forward to home-cooked tilapia tonight!

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Claire, it's so funny how people's tastes are so very different. I would not miss anything on that list at all. I've never liked ham of any kind, or fish (don't hate me).

Last night, I braved the cold, 20 degrees, and cooked a steak on the grill. So yummy! Tonight is a package of pre-made ribs (again don't hate me) with whatever else looks good to me while they are warming up :)

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When I was in college (1959-1963), the dining hall served a pinkish slab of something that the federal government called ham and we who were doomed to eat it called mystery meat. For years after that I couldn't stand to be around real ham. Even the smell of it cooking was nauseating. Now I appreciate a good ham, especially Virginia ham.

Claire, I buy frozen tilapia in a bag of 10-12 filets. Each filet is encased in its own vacuum envelope withing the bag. I usually cook it with some kind of sauce, often using canned roasted tomatoes, so the slightly off taste of frozen over fresh isn't noticeable. It's a great fast food -- the filets are so thin that I don't bother to defrost them, just lightly flour and plop them in the pan to brown a bit, letting them defrost as they cook. Actually, when defrosted and still raw, they are rather fragile, difficult to handle. 

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Freezing seems to make most fish fillets fragile when defrosted.  Our grocery stores in the South sell farm-raised catfish, which is a whole different critter from those caught in the wild.  Kathie I used blackening seasoning, olive oil and key lime juice on the fillets in their parchment "envelopes" and they baked whilst the veggie pilaf cooked.  It was rather tasty.  DH teases me that the only reason he takes me out to at is to see what I come up with in the kitchen...

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We don't like blackening seasoning, but there are other ways to dress up fish. With the whole skinned catfish, I like to put them in a microwave safe dish and drizzle my own blend of vinegar, oil and spices (or bottled low salt Italian dressing in a pinch), cover, and cook at half power until done. Moist, tasty. 

I know what you mean about trying new "restaurant type" dishes. I used to be a slave to recipes but now usually wing it. I'll look up recipes on the internet for basic reference -- to find out how long and at what temperature to cook something, for example -- but then do my own thing. The downside is that when something turns out especially well, it's unlikely that I can repeat the performance! Oh, well. 

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Tonight I tried a new marinade for sirloin steak that got scads of great reviews. We were not impressed by the steak. I was planning on trying a new beef stir fry recipe tomorrow, but now I'm wondering if I should just thaw out the ribs in the freezer. The menfolk always like slow cooked ribs.

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Wow, you all are way more fancy cooks than I am! I'm in awe of all these dinners. Don't know how you all have time to do all this fancy cooking.

I'm a very basic country gal with a family of folks who eat quite plain and simple. Being a very strict vegetarian in a house of carnivores sometimes takes the joy out cooking for myself so I eat even more simple. Mostly raw veggies for me. Thankfully no one here is a fan of overcooked or mushy veggies.

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Restaurants serving overcooked or mushy veggies don't seem to last long, or else God has been very good to us and not led us to them.  There are very, very few meals that I spend more than a half hour from prep to table.  My food might sound fancy, but it's really just plain food; we just like a lot of different cuisines, and I go nuts with veggies since we started picking up the Moosewood cookbooks at our local thrift stores. 

Our trip to the International Music Festival in Lafayette, LA, a couple of years ago led to a discovery of wonderful things to fill eggplant halves with and bake them.  Our most recent discovery is kale and spinach.  A lot of grocery stores carry  spin rack of recipe cards and our Publix puts  recipe every week in their weekly ad that the lady in the store demonstrates.  I'm doing one of them for dinner tomorrow that we tried and liked late last week using shrimp:  http://www.publix.com/recipes-planning/aprons-simple-meals/greek-shrimp-and-ravioli-saute.  Since we ate all the squash I'll fix some of my kale and spinach with one of my favorite Moosewood recipes and cook it with pine nuts, raisins and a wee bit of garlic.

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Wow, Holly, that's a sodium delivery system in disguise ... 1520 mg. 

I like spinach and kale but L can't eat it because of the vitamin K. It messes up his blood thinner readings. 

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I've read so much about the down sides of using reduced fat/low fat cheese, yogurt and other dairy products, artificial sweeteners, diet anythings, etc., that we pretty much avoid all of them. We enjoy the stuff made with full fat and sugar, but in moderation. We check the nutritional labels for excessive sodium and sugar and avoid those products. Have stopped buying canned soups because of the high sodium content. This approach seems to be working just fine for us.

Like you, we cook from basic ingredients, so we can control intake of the not-so-good stuff. 

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Well, I've just been eating tostadas for the last couple of days and tonight I came home and knew I wouldn't feel like cooking anything, so I had a Jumbo Jack from Jack in the Box for supper.

Tomorrow I have to pick up a library book, so I'll be out and about. So I'll also pick up some whip cream to make the pumpkin ice cream and I may actually cook something for supper tomorrow. Can't decide what.

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50 minutes ago, havanaholly said:

Pork ribs are marinating and grits left over from yesterday's breakfast will become tonight's polenta.

Holly, you intrigued me with polenta, I had to go look it up and read about it. I may try this one day, I think I would like it, but not so sure about the rest of my crew.

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Tracy, I sprinkle my slices with a very light dusting of cayenne pepper and heat them in a tiny bit of olive oil just until crisp on each side, and serve them with honey drooled over the top.  I chopped up half a Vidalia onion and caramelized it and cooked the greens with it.

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I put a large chicken breast in the crock pot and covered it with a can of cream of chicken soup mixed with a packet of dry Italian dressing mix (with some salt, pepper, and cayenne), and then cut up 8 oz of cream cheese and threw that in on top. Before I serve it, I'll sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese on top of the chicken. This is another experiment, but I have macaroni and cheese in the oven for lunch right now, so if the chicken doesn't work out, I'll have that for supper, too. *sigh*

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Catfish fillets in parchment with a pat of unsalted butter, sprinkle of salt & fresh ground pepper, a splash of key lime juice to serve; with cabbage braised with caramelized onions and sweet peppers and cheese grit.  Our tummies are much happier tonight!

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