What's For Dinner?

Just cause I think we need to see more pics of these meals.

Attachment 283531

mmmmm! I thank you very much for that harbie. Nice shot, you can see the ooey gooeyness of that cheese.....devine.

sushi buy one get one free

Chicken pieces roasted in Italian dressing; baked potatoes, roasted carrots.
I'll have some lettuce and cuc as well - husband had salad yesterday, so it's enough that tonight he'll eat carrots! (yes, I am his veggie police!)

Fish chowder. Was going to make fish tacos, but we only had 10 small flour tortillas.

Pan seared salmon fillet with lemon juice, oregano, minced shallots on orzo with zucchini and cherry tomato.

Tonight's supper is oven baked pork steaks, sweet potato cubes (new recipe with oil, brown sugar, and cinnamon coating), fresh broken fettuccine noodles with optional Alfredo sauce, carrot sticks with ranch dressing and a big glass of milk. I plan on having leftovers for lunch tomorrow. I usually try to cook supper with tomorrow's lunch in mind.

edit: I forgot about the unsweetened apple sauce. LO ate it while I was cooking. I love having apple sauce with pork. :) The new sweet potato recipe is a keeper, yummy!

Tonight I made zucchini cakes for my parents and I took the leftovers and added some artichoke hearts and feta cheese and stuffed some portobello mushrooms topped with both parm and panko and then grilled on the BBQ. Served with a simple side salad made for a perfect meatless meal. We also had homemade carrot cake for dessert.

Attachment 283558


Attachment 283559

Chinese seafood hot pot.

OK, a few quick notes on my first couple of uses of Instant Pot (pressure cooker) that I got yesterday.

The first meal I cooked in it was pork chops with onion and potatoes (I had already seasoned my chops, they were ready in the fridge). First I put a bit of oil in, added my onions and pork chops and used the 'sear' function to brown them a bit with the lid off. There's I think three heat levels for this function, I put it on high and it worked very well, browned everything quite nicely.

I took the chops out, added cut up potatoes, put the pork chops on top and added about 1/2 cup of chicken broth. I really didn't know anything about pressure cooking when I bought this gadget, and one thing I've learned is that you almost always need liquid (unless you're cooking something that will release a lot of liquid). Now I sealed the lid on (very easy), set the thing on the top to 'seal' instead of 'vent,' and started fiddling with the controls. It's a bit of a puzzle at first, but after a couple minutes I figured out how to set the cooker to high pressure, and tell it cook my supper for six minutes.

The six minutes is a bit misleading. While the food does indeed cook in about that time, the pot needs about ten minutes to get up to high pressure, and then needs to cool a bit so the pressure dissapates before you can remove the lid. If you wait for a 'natural release' the pressure will dissapate in probably 15 minutes. You can speed this up by turning the thing on the top from 'seal' to 'vent.'

Dinner was pretty good, although I might have overcooked the pork chops just a bit, they were flavourful due to the browning I'd done first, and the potatoes were done just great. I could have made gravy if I'd thought of it, but the liquid the potatoes were in was very tasty on its own.

I later put in some chicken thighs with a sauce I made, they were still a little bit frozen, first set it for six minutes and they weren't cooked, so I set it for another four and it was fine. I should have used the sear function for those too but I didn't, will brown them under the broiler a bit tonight when we go to eat them.

Tonight we'll have that chicken, and I'm going to put potatoes in but on the rack that comes with it so they're not in the water that will be in the bottom and they'll kind of steam. I think that those will only take maybe five minutes cooking at high pressure. I thought about setting the timer so they'd be done when I got home, but I'm not yet brave enough to set a pressure cooker to cook when I'm not there. :)

It's going to take a lot more fiddling to find out what works in this thing, but I think I like it. I also think it will get a lot more use in the colder months when I want to make stew or soup, and it will probably replace my crockpots for the most part.

not exactly sure, however, Foodland has pork ribs on sale starting today, so hoping to get a few trays of those to put in the freezer and maybe bbq some for dinner....and probably baked potato and a gigantic garden salad :)

Marinated pork steak and potato salad

Tacos! (taco salad for me) Pulled cooked taco meat from freezer, cheese and lettuce shredded and ready, which is good because DS has about 20 mins to eat!

Last night was not frugal we ended up having a Swiss Chalet family meal, my meeting ran late so by the time I got out went to Costco and got home there was no cooking at 7 pm.

Tonight is a bit of a mystery, mom was supposed to make dinner and leave it in the fridge as she is working but texted me she never did so now I have to figure something out and everything is frozen. If my memory serves there is leftover pasta sauce in the fridge so will probably just boil up some noodles and have that.

Spaghetti and meat balls with a tossed salad. I may have a glass of wine if I can get hid of this pesky headache.