Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

We're having mystery soup. This is what happens when I have a lot of odds and ends of things in the kitchen that I'm trying to use up. The mystery this week is quinoa, a bit of spaghetti sauce, Cuban-style black beans, a few fresh tomatoes, a can of mixed veggies, hminced garlic, and miscellaneous dried spices. We'll see how this turns out...

We're having spinach sausage soufflé, thanks to a freezer meal swap, with a salad (with berries!), and homemade crusty bread. And for dessert, parfaits ("which is a fancy word for ice cream sundaes"), thanks to the book Fancy Nancy and my girls' obsession with it.

I made chicken in my crockpot with steamed haricot verts. I now have lunch/dinner for several days. I'm going to make parmesan chicken breasts with noodles later in the week.

Mmm, spinach souffle sounds good.

Lately, my problem is that when I go shopping at the beginning of the week I buy ingredients for fancy things like spinach souffles, but then I'm always too tired to cook and the ingredients go bad.

My freezer is all stocked up with broccoli chicken cheese rolls and chicken enchiladas. Plus I have leftover not-very-good peanut chicken noodles. I've got lunch for two weeks, easy!

Dragon Lady wrote:6-quart or larger crockpot

Well, I got the chicken and put it in and put in a lot of water, all the time thinking "is this really supposed to fit in here??" Pretty sure I have a smaller crockpot... but, this is happening. 5-6 hours from now will either be disaster or a yummy pot of food. Only time will tell. Maybe next time I'll get a tiny cornish hen.

Red Iguana to celebrate the return of the prodigal. He made us pasta carbonara last night

:)

Last night Marduk made french onion soup. It was amazing.

I used to get dinner at Mountain West Burrito every now and then, but since they took out part of Campus Drive, it's a pain to drive there from where I park, so it wasn't worth it. Last week, I realized that I could kill two birds with one stone, since I usually go on a walk in the afternoon, and just walk there from my office and then take it home for dinner.

In case anyone was curious, my chicken was totally cooked and edible and everything! There is a bit of a mess where the water in the crockpot overflowed, because the crockpot was too small for a whole chicken, but oh well. Turned out fine, and was easy to take apart.

Katya, I used to go to Mountain West Burrito all the time (but the one off State Street). So yummy.

mic0, I'm glad you tried it! Too bad your crockpot is too small. That's weird that it overflowed, though. Mine simmers and has small bubbles, but never enough to overflow it. And I fill it to the brim. So it's also possible that your crockpot cooks hotter than mine, so it boils harder. Next time just use less water. There's not a specific guide to how much water to use. It'll just be more concentrated broth next time.

Out of curiosity, what did you make with it?

I made naan tonight along with spicy kidney beans. It wasn't too hard! And delicious.

We had Panda Express tonight. Because I was super accomplished today and actually wrote out a meal plan for the week, wrote a grocery list and went shopping before dinner. I even pulled out hamburger and had it defrosted to make swiss cheeseburgers. But then on my shopping list I wrote "hamburger" instead of "hamburger buns" so when I was at the store I thought, "What in the world? Why did I write down hamburger? I have almost a half a cow's worth of hamburger in my freezer. Did I have a brain cloud and just started writing everything I needed for the recipe instead of what I needed to buy?" I even then looked up at the meal list to see if it could be something else that I miswrote and couldn't figure it out. So I just crossed it off my list.

And then I got home and as I was walking into the house realized it should have been hamburger buns. [sigh] So we got Panda take out instead.

awww sad. I was going to make something else, but then I found out I didn't have the lentils for it XD.

Date at Rubio's for Taco Tuesday.

I've decided maybe I should try all those things in my Pinterest food boards instead of just accumulating more. So I picked out 5 for the next week or two and got all but the most exotic ingredients. Tomorrow (or the next day) I hit up the Asian market (that one on Freedom is magical!) and get the rest of the stuff. And some Milkus, because milk-flavored soda beverage is surprisingly good.

It probably overflowed both because it was so full and because I put it on high instead of low (which I didn't think would matter until you mentioned the boiling in your comment). I just made it with carrots, onion, and potato. Really simple.

bobtheenchantedone wrote:Last night Marduk made french onion soup. It was amazing.

I have yet to find a recipe for french onion soup that I consider adequate. Would you be willing to share Marduk's?

Unfortunately Marduk's recipies are in his brain, so you'd have to ask him. All I know is that red onions, beef broth, thyme, a baguette, and Dubliner cheese were all required at various points. Probably more stuff too.

I am of the belief that a good onion soup needs a lot of butter to sautee the onions in. And that it doesn't taste right without French bread and cheese.