Cookies for dinner?

Adam is out of town this week, so I’m not cooking much. But it should give me a chance to catch up on what I’ve been cooking the last few weeks. Last night I made cookies. They are ridiculously sweet but delicious. I have 2 dozen of them. I don’t know what to do with all those cookies. Hopefully they freeze well.

Oatmeal peanut butter sandwich cookies from Joy the Baker. Hers look much prettier than mine.

Catching Up

My menu plans for last week kind of fell apart. It happens. I go to the grocery store, I buy food for the week, but then things happen and for whatever reason we end up eating out.

Tuesday I made Italian Wedding Soup from Cooks Illustrated. It was ok. I am convinced if I make enough different kinds of soup, I will eventually find one I like (Cooks Illustrated does have an excellent cream of tomato soup recipe). I also made an arugula salad. I love arugula. This salad was delicious, I will definitely make it again: Pear, Arugula and Pancetta Salad from Epicurious.

Wednesday I needed to use the leftover meat (a combination of ground pork and ground beef) from the meatballs in the Italian Wedding soup. So I made burgers, with sauteed mushrooms (which I had bought for a meal the previous week that we never made) and some left over provolone cheese. They were quite delicious actually.

Thursday I went to an auction, where dinner consisted of several glasses of wine.

Friday we ate at the local taco truck. I love the taco truck.

Saturday we had BBQ at a friends’ house after spending the afternoon helping them lay sod. There are now three BBQ places in Ballard. This one was pretty good. They did have good greens.

Sunday was Easter dinner at another friends’ house. I brought gougeres.

Tonight I made roasted salmon, which was supposed to be on the menu last week but never seemed to happen. It was really good, and super fast and easy. Best of all (from Adam’s perspective) only two dishes to clean! I’ve experimented with a lot of different ways of cooking salmon, and I have concluded that roasting is really the best.

Let the Cooking Resume

Hawaii was lovely, but 4 days is not long enough. It took almost a full week for me to recover and I finally went to the grocery store Saturday, so can cook dinner again.

Last night was chilaquiles with eggs. I first had chilaquiles for breakfast at some bar in Cabo on a girls’ weekend. We were there in the off season (off season = unbearably hot) so finding food outside of the hotel was a bit challenging. But we were starving, this place was open and they were serving chilaquiles. This is a ridiculously simple meal–tortilla chips, chile sauce and cheese–but oh so delicious. I of course am incapable of making just one thing for dinner, so what should have been a 30 minute meal turned into a 90 minute ordeal. We did have a delicious Mexcian chopped salad however, and my homemade refried beans (and by mine I mean from the Moosewood cookbook).

Chilaquiles with egg from Epicurious: I just used a couple of handfuls of tortilla chips, I did not make my own. I also used California chiles because that is what I had in my cupboard. They are less spicy than the chiles called for, but good for those who like food on the mild side.

Mexican chopped salad also from Epicurious: I loved this. Adam did not. He thought it was too sweet. I used queso fresco instead of feta, since I had leftover queso fresco from the chilaquiles and I love queso fresco.

Refried beans from Moosewood: these are almost as easy as opening a can, and much much tastier.

one onion, diced

6 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp salt

2 cans pinto beans

Saute the onion, half the garlic, the cumin and the salt until onion is soft. Drain and rinse the beans (if you don’t rinse they will be unbearable salty) and add to the pan with the rest of the garlic. Mash and stir until warm.