That open faced sandwich sounds delicious.
It’s been a busy couple weeks. We visited the last 2 colleges and a choice will be made this week. Lulu is currently in Kentucky at a debate tournament, and she turned 18 there yesterday. Doing our celebrating in the week before and after. Here’s what we’ve eaten at home over the past couple weeks:
4/8: caesar roasted swordfish (Barefoot Contessa) over butter lettuce, tomato slices and rolls on the side.
4/9: Indian shrimp hash (an old epicurious print out), raita
4/10: sausage/pepper/onion heroes
4/16: angel hair pasta with raw tomato sauce
4/18: NYT’s mushroom Parmesan, ciabatta, chocolate mousse
4/19: solo, baked potato, cheese and crackers
Lulu wanted a new suit for debate, so we found a cute one and I got it for her as a birthday gift. I’m insisting on calling it her birthday suit. Today I will bake carrot cake cupcakes to frost tomorrow to welcome her home and to birthday celebrations. Hope everyone has a happy and delicious week!
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Actuals for April 15 week, cooking for 2 in MN. Where we’ve had typical spring weather ranging from 70+ degrees down to snow flurries and just below freezing with bright sunshine. One of my favorite cooking bloggers, Julia Pacheco, posted a video compilation this week of 15 one-pan recipes gathered up from her prior posts. So I’ve got a fresh set of inspiration / interesting main dishes on my make-it-someday list and will make one of them today. Lots of lunches out this past week for me, and as I listed leftovers options ready in the fridge my husband got to say our standing joke line (from a Star Trek episode) “I will feed him”.
Mon : Hot ham & Swiss buns, pear, deli potato salad
Tues: Walleye, reheat polenta stuffed red pepper, sweet potato half. BAKED Dessert - rhubarb upside down cake.
Wed: Shrimp, Asparagus with butter lemon sauce, mashed potatoes. Rhubarb cake
Thurs: Steak salad - Black garlic marinated steak (from meat dept), skillet-cooked then thin sliced on iceberg lettuce w Parm and croutons. 2nd salad - Chopped salad broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, mushroom with dill dressing. (recipe below), Fresh pear halves
Fri: Sheet pan meal - Homemade Shake & Bake chicken, sweet potatoes. Chopped salad with dill dressing.
Sat: Repeat Homemade Shake & Bake chicken, sweet potatoes. Chopped salad with dill dressing.
BAKED as posted in WAYB - cinnamon no-yeast buns (fail due to recipe typo in book - converted to cupcakes)
Sun (Today): One pan sausage and tomato gnocchi
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Broccoli Cauliflower Chopped Salad With Dill Dressing
Fills a 2 Quart casserole - about 8 servings.
1 small bunch Broccoli, cut small into size of thumbnail or a grape-tomato - 3-4 C
cauliflower, cut into small thumbnail sized pieces - about half a small head / 3-4 C
button mushrooms, sliced - 4 oz
sliced green onions/chopped onion - about 1 T.
small cherry tomatoes, halved - about 10
Dressing: clear (white) vinegar - 1/4 C
vegetable oil - 1/4 C
dill weed - 1 t.
garlic powder - 1/4 t.
sugar - 1 t.
black pepper - 1/4 t. or less
Combine above. Pour dressing over the vegetables.
Stir before serving to be sure all is coated well.
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Hi all, cooking for two adults and a teen (again) in the Boston burbs.
DH and I enjoyed our week of empty-nesting, including an overnight to Providence (art museum + lots of food). DS flew home yesterday morning and said he had a great time but was completely exhausted. They really packed a ton of sightseeing into a short time! His pictures were incredible and he is eager for us to all go out West at some point.
Back to normal here, though not really - I managed to pull a muscle in my back yesterday so am trying to take it easy. The PA I saw at urgent care said to avoid bending and twisting “so no unloading the dishwasher!” and I will heed that advice.
Two meals this week are from a cookbook I borrowed from the library called “Hot Sheet” - we’ll see if they work…
Sun: burgers, fries, carrot sticks
Mon: sheet pan mac and cheese, roasted broccoli
Tues: taco torte (https://smittenkitchen.com/2016/02/taco-torte/), chips and salsa on the side
Weds: sheet pan “stir fry” with chicken, green beans, and red pepper
Thurs: sloppy joes, marinated cucumbers (a recipe from Moosewood)
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The weather here in nyc has been all over the place, making planning or cooking for what one feels like eating a bit challenging, haha.
Planning some simple meals to balance the still-excessive eating out, fulfill a few cravings and curiosities, and participate in cook-along threads like DOTQ and Cuisine-OTQ.
Some ideas for the week:
– Dapanji / Big Tray Chicken + flat noodles + bok choy
– Tagliatelle with king oyster and shiitake mushrooms + fennel-orange salad
– Tepsi kabab or Izmir Kofte (copycat for a neighborhood favorite) for Turkish Cuisine-OTQ + rice
– Curry chicken noodle soup in quest of something intensely flavored like the Teochow version I ate last week
– Bengali mustard fish + vegetable / masala khichdi + papad
– Miso black cod (freezer) + spinach goma-ae+ rice
– Sformato (cauliflower, mushroom, or fennel) for DOTQ - Savory Egg Dishes
Hope everyone enjoys a relaxing weekend and a tasty week ahead.
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In case anyone missed the current cook-along threads, here they are.
We also have a new “Cooking From” category for cookbooks and authors who may not fit into other places but there’s enough interest to consolidate (if you would like to add threads to this, please message me).
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I love that scene from Star Trek! That’s how DH feels about caring for our cats 
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Happy 18th to Lulu, it feels like she’s grown up in this group. I love your solo dinner–I always forget about baked potatoes!
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That taco tart looks so good!
Glad DS had such a great time.
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Thank you! I found chowhound when she was only a month or two old, so she really has grown up with this group 
I LOVE a baked potato!
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18!! how can it be?? 18 is the legal drinking age in Manitoba where I grew up, so 18 was a Big Deal…
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I saw this, and it intrigued me vs stacked enchiladas (cleafrly I’m into stacked things at themoment… lasagna, crespelle, and so on 
)
Good luck with the back. I stretched yesterday, and then yelped as I got a catch in my side. What the WHAT?
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Fully supportive of this – now I really want to buy my nephews suits for their birthdays just so I can use this 
This sounds good!
Is it along the lines of this?
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I missed this the first time around – do you have a recipe you could share?
Yes, echoing mbcraw4d, happy 18th to Lulu and her parents! She has grown up here and it’s been such a pleasure for me to get to know her virtually in some ways. I love the birthday suit!
I hope the college choice gets done with minimal angst. It’s difficult for 18 year olds to make what seems such a consequential decision. So much happens in such a short time frame…the decisions are made by the colleges, the prospective students have just a few weeks to make a final choice and that often involves travel in various directions, and then in just a few months, they head off to college after summer jobs into a totally new and challenging environment. And in the meantime senior year in high school is progressing, including intense activities like Lulu’s debating, with build-up there to graduation.
Looking back on it so many years ago for me, it was all a blur. LLM, I hope your family gets some peaceful times to celebrate and recharge!
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18 was the legal drinking age in North Carolina for me, too…long since changed to 21 in the US. And I wasn’t 18 until August, after high school graduation in May. That didn’t stop me or almost anyone else, however!
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I’m a big fan of stacked enchiladas, because I don’t have the patience to roll them individually. I’m not sure how well this will work with Siete almond flour tortillas, though, so cross your fingers…
And thank you for the sympathy/good wishes on the stupid back muscle. I was exercising when I pulled it so I feel like I was being pushed for doing good! 
today is better than yesterday, though.
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Wonderful that DS’s trip was great and that his parents enjoyed the empty-nesting preview! I’m glad he had some time to get used to time change and sleep before school resumes tomorrow. He can help plan your future family trip out West. We haven’t done the Grand Canyon or Arizona, but before we adopted our DS we had more than several wonderful trips to Utah and New Mexico.
My family recently spent a day in Providence (from Somerville) for the first time in more than a decade. I got reminded how cool Providence is and so different in some ways from Cambridge, which we are so used to. I hope we can return and explore the wonderful food scene there.
I hope you recover soon from the pulled muscle and definitely follow medical advice about the dishwasher, which perhaps also applies to laundry machines and house cleaning!
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No it never does…
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