Possibly it’s a stretch to call this a recipe, but we loved this – just a tossed-together thing that would be good to clean out the fridge. Would work with most vegetables, but I think the sweet potato and sausage base made it. Hot Italian might be really delish.
Main Dishes
Pork and Charred Brussels Sprouts
After the better part of a month on travel, and the end of my CCIE studying (finally), it’s time to get back in the kitchen! I think *anything* cooked at home would have tasted great today, but this one was really good. I’ve had my eye on this recipe for several weeks, and just never seemed to get around to it, but I’m glad we did. This was out of Sunset, and the only changes I made were to up the garlic and sub Sriracha for chiles in the sauce. The sauce was especially good, and we were thinking it would do well with pretty much any meat out there (steak marinade or fish comes to mind in particular). Worth repeating for sure.
Stuffed Pepper Soup
As much as I hate it, it is soup and stew weather again. I first saw this on Skinnytaste and liked the idea, though thought it a bit bland. Turns out there are a lot of recipes for stuffed pepper soup out there, and this is a mish mash of all of them – forgive the vague measurements. This was great – I wouldn’t change anything other than potentially lowering the amount of stock I use next time and upping the number of peppers. Definitely one to add to the cold-weather line up!
Moroccan Chicken Thighs
After traveling for two weeks and eating restaurant food (some of it not very good), I was dying to cook despite the study hours. This is a Cooking Light recipe I had been eyeing for a while, but never got around to making. We were very pleased with it. I cooked it a bit too long, so there was less sauce than I would have liked, but still a winner. I did sub golden raisins for apricots since that’s what I had on hand and it worked well. This might also do well with chicken breasts, though I prefer thighs in general.
New England Clam Bake
So this is kind of a modified clam bake…I am a born-and-bred New Englander who is allergic to shellfish – the crawly kind, at least. So no lobster, shrimp, crab, etc. Seems sacrilege, doesn’t it? But clams and mussels? It’s on. So when I do a clam bake, it’s unfortunately not traditional – no lobster and no shrimp. Still delicious though! Who can complain about clams and smoked sausage? I throw in some corn and potatoes, a good crisp beer…summer in Connecticut. 🙂
Chicken in Dill Mustard Sauce
We have a CSA dill plant that is flourishing when most of our other plants have kind of had it…went searching for an easy weeknight dill recipe and here’s what we found! This came from an old issue of Gourmet magazine. We enjoyed it and it was a pretty fast meal – the original recipe called for chicken legs, but I used chicken breasts and it was fine. Otherwise no changes. Definitely a make-again, but I do think I’d add more mustard next time.
Grilled Lemon-Oregano Lamb Chops
This is our second time making this Cooking Light recipe, and we were just as pleased as the first go…though I wish I had remembered to write it down then, because I felt like there was too much lemon BOTH times. We marinated this for about 4 hours (rather than 15 minutes in the original), and grilled them outdoors. Next time I might add a bit more garlic and about half the lemon. We served this with orzo salad and minted zucchini ribbons.
Orzo Salad
This is one of my favorite side dishes, and I especially like it with anything Mediterranean. I made this to go with lemon-oregano grilled lamb chops for dinner, and probably could have hoovered the entire thing myself. This is good warm or cold, so leftovers are very useful. This could also be a main dish for a vegetarian night if you paired with a salad, etc.
Slow Cooker Hungarian Chicken
Now that I’m juggling two horses after work on top of normal life and crazed studying, I’m suddenly becoming BFFs with our slow cooker. It’s so far allowing us to keep making healthy dinners even if neither one of us is home until after 7pm (and tired, who wants to cook after that?). This was a Cooking Light recipe that we liked, though it needed extra on all the seasoning – especially the salt and garlic. The only real change I made to the original (besides a heavier seasoning hand) was to use boneless, skinless chicken breast instead of bone-in…that’s just what we had. We’re mostly doing the low carb thing, so we did not server over pasta and it was just fine with a vegetable side. The below is with my changes to up the seasoning.
Grilled Swordfish with Lime, Basil and Mint
Given it was Labor Day weekend, we wanted to spend some QT with the grill – which is kind of silly because it’s not as though it’s going to be 5 degrees now that “summer is over.” But it was a good plan, since there was some deliciousness going on! This was a nice swordfish recipe that I got from Giada De Laurentiis and substituted lime for lemon because I thought it would go well with the rest of the flavors, and modified to serve just two. There was a lot of sauce left, so I think you could cut back the oil even further – we threw a lot out. Definitely a winner. Very filling with corn on the cob for a side.







