Friday, July 9, 2010

Meal Plan Update P2

I made the remaining dishes from my meal plan over the last couple days and will post my pics and thoughts. It's cool to see that at least a couple of you out there have tried some of them - but I'd love to hear about anyone else's experiences.

I have to say that the stuffed zucchini wasn't my favorite. It definitely had potential, but seemed to be missing some flavor. I will admit that I don't think I cut the potatoes small enough so they were still a little hard for my liking after cooking for the allotted time. Also, as I was making it, I realized that the middle parts of the zucchini that you remove are never added back into the recipe. This seemed a little strange to me. What are you supposed to do with all those good innards? So I chopped them up a little and added them to the pan a little before I added in the tomatoes. Maybe that ruined them, but I don't think so. My sister said she tried these with mashed potatoes and I think that may be the way to go here.



The stewed chicken was also not as good as I was hoping it would be. You never know with those Food Network recipes. Sometimes they are great and sometimes they can flop (okay it wasn't a flop but still). It was actually pretty easy to put together which you wouldn't think with the long ingredient list. Basically, everything is mixed together with the chicken to marinate overnight and the next day you don't have much left to do besides let it cook. My biggest complaint is that it was too oily. You could definitely cut down the amount of oil you brown the chicken in from 1/3 cup to 1/4 cup and maybe even less. When it was finished, I was skimming off quite a bit of oil. Also, it was a little too soupy. I would have preferred a thicker sauce. Did anyone else try this one??



I was a little apprehensive about the steak with the romesco sauce just because it didn't look like something that I would normally make - or maybe it didn't sound as appealing. I'm not sure. However, the sauce was really delicious and simple to put together. After I made it, I tasted a bit while the steaks were broiling and wasn't sure if I liked it - but once you put some on the meat it's quite fantastic. I'm sure it would be equally good with other types of meat - pork loin or chicken for example. I used sirloin instead of skirt steak for mine because it was a lot less expensive and as you can see from the picture, it got a little well done due to a thermometer that broke during the cooking process. =( But that's another story. I have some extra sauce left, and think I'll mix it with some marina and put it over pasta. If you haven't already, give this recipe a try, especially the sauce.
P.S. Those are sweet potato fries (my fav) but as you can see are not orange. It would seem you can't find orange sweet potatoes here in Oregon anymore; maybe they are trying to distinguish themselves from yams. Is it like this for anyone else?


My favorite recipe of the meal plan was the salmon burgers followed by the steak with romesco sauce. Now that the meal plan updates are done, I've got quite a few summer fruit desserts to share so be prepared. I can't decide if I should do one big post with them all or split them up into a few posts. Any thoughts?

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Meal Plan Update P1

Have you tried any of the recipes yet?? So far I've done two of them and both were quite yummy. Here are my pics - not as great as the original ones sadly - but it shows they are doable!

The breakfast pizza should actually be classified as the fast and easy recipe. I substituted the bacon for some pancetta that I needed to use and didn't have any scallions, so I used a leek and sauteed it with the pancetta to soften it. I used store bought crust and because of that there are just a couple of minor adjustments that need to be made. First, make sure you roll/flatten the crust thin. On her recipe, the baking time is around 10 minutes but the dough package will tell you at least 13. I wanted to make sure the dough was cooked through so I did the 13 minutes and by that point the eggs yolks weren't quite as soft as I would have preferred. So next time, I'd make sure the crust was thinner so I could cut the baking time by a few minutes. But it was still good.



The salmon burgers were not so fast. They are supposedly a 30 minute meal - but it took closer to an hour for me. However, they were fantastic! Mark really loved them. Make sure you get the right amount of the mayo mixture in with the salmon. I think I put a little too much in and so the patties were really soft and hard to get into the pan without having them fall apart. But once they were cooked, they stayed together quite well. Also, it says to cook on med-high heat, but the butter does burn pretty easy so I would put it on med and cook 4-5 min per side (vs. 3-4). Yum, yum. Definitely give these a try!