Weekly Gourmet

Lent is coming! Try this one for your "Fish On Friday." Do you guys ever wonder what I make when the rest of normal people everywhere go through a drive-thru? First of all, I can't patronage places with misspelled words like "thru" so that's off the table for me already. Secondly, nowadays these places idiotically list all their calories on their menus. Who is this helpful to? People who watch their calories' heads explode when they see these numbers. People who don't watch their calories don't care how many calories are in their fried crap. Maybe like medium people? Like 14 year old boys who want to beef up? Are the calorie listings for them? They note these for their files? It makes no sense to me, and further, causes me to order one small frozen yogurt every time. Frozen yogurt does not a meal make. SO, therefore, I have come up with a whole list of Liz-Friendly Fast Foods, such as the recipe I have here for you. This meal is finished in ten ...

Today is Tuesday. And for once, it's Taco Tuesday here! See, I can be fun. OK they were pretty healthy and Steve ate all the chips and salsa at lunch today. So I am as fun as healthy tacos, no chips, and no margaritas can be. Around here it's better than usual. Sheet Pan Crispy Fish Tacos  Recipe from Rhonda Boone. Ingredients So little makes me feel so big. 1 1/2 cups pumpkin seeds (pepitas) ¿Que pasa? Sí. OK normally no way, skip! BUUUUT I actually, super coincidentally, always get the same salad from Chik-fil-A and it comes with a bag of chipotle lime pepitas. I save them for recipes like this!I had three bags of them, which only got me about 1/2 cup crushed seeds, but it still counts as kitchen serendipity. Normally I would never have pumpkin seeds unless it was early November. You can replace with literally anything crunchy or omit. I would have likely gone with pistachios if I wasn't awesome like I was tonight. But using expired salad toppings from a fast food joint ...

  Today is Sunday. Tonight I was ZONKED due to the fact that I went sledding with my kids for OVER one hour today, hung up soggy coats and gloves for the next hour, and wiped little puddles of water off my floor for the next 17 hours. All worth it to hear the little squeals of joy escaping from their rosy-cheeked faces as we whizzed down the hill together. And then to be able to let them watch TV for the rest of the day without even feeling bad about it. Back to my exhaustion. I was exhausted! So I wanted just a quickie Sunday pasta dinner. What I made took almost no time at all. Shrimp defrost so fast. Run some cold water on them and they are ready to go. They cook even faster - just two minutes here. The angel hair cooks in three minutes. The sauce took maybe five minutes. I feel bad even making it sound like I did something fancy because of the shrimp. It took me longer to beg someone to set the table than it did to make the dinner. This one comes from epicurious. Shrimp Scampi ...

Today is Wednesday. You know how I feel about picky eaters (see my dissertation below), so you can imagine my thoughts on "people with dietary restrictions." I just love 'em. I'm not at all annoyed by my kid's nut allergy. Not! Basically, diets of almost any kind irritate me on some level. Bananas make my mouth itch, but I still eat them every day! I'm just not into being restricted by what foods I can or cannot eat. That being said, my new friend Katie asked me what I make that she can have, being both gluten-free and dairy-free AND having a peanut allergy in her house. I have been thinking about a non-gluten, non-dairy, non-sucky something I could make for her, and I think I have got it with this one. This recipe also works for people who are unsure about fish (should read: children) and are just trying to get their feet (fins? Ha get it!?) wet with the idea of eating seafood. Adding coconut to mild fish barely even counts as eating fish because all you t...

Today is Wednesday. Somewhere amidst spelling words, and piano lessons, and a sweet Lincoln Logs building-sesh, all these people here wanted to eat dinner, yet again. What's a busy working mom like me to do when she needs to make a Lincoln Log garage, plus get a healthy dinner on the table, and she only has time for... oh I don't know... say ten ingredients or less? Fewer. Well Amy of Geneva, IL, let me show you the feast you can make your family with just ten ingredients (not including salt, pepper, and water. Don't even start with me.).  Timing for all three dishes: Prepare butternut squash per instructions. Now prepare honey mustard topping for salmon. Now spend 25 minutes playing with your phone or getting a jump-start on the dishes (HA!). I n tbe last five minutes or so of squash bake time, p reheat the broiler. Top your salmon fillets with the glaze. Remove squash from oven and put in the salmon. When salmon has been in for ten minutes, add squash back in, to bottom r...

Today is Thursday. Things got a little experimental around here tonight. I wanted to make seafood but haven't been to my local fishmonger (Costco) in a bit so I only had canned tuna to play with. "Hmm I can come up with something a little better than tuna melts," I thought to myself. I made an Italian tuna salad with cannellini beans and whole roasted cauliflowers. I never thought tuna AND beans AND green things (parsley) would go over with the kids so I let us have it on some lovely sourdough bread I baked today. Yes, yes, carbs on a Thursday. It happens. Picture me doing all this while four little girls giggled and shrieked from upstairs and occasionally filtered downstairs- sometimes wet, sometimes with blue hands, always looking guilty- as I happily sang and played chef in the kitchen... joke was on me! Liz's Italian Tuna Salad Serves 6 Ingredients 1 can cannellini beans (white kidney beans), rinsed and drained 2 T. olive oil 2 T. mayonnaise 1 clove g...

  Today is Monday. I tend to be healthiest and get the most accomplished on Mondays. Today I was neither healthy, nor did I accomplish my grocery shopping, as I needed to. It’s still Christmas break so I figure I get some slack. The lack of groceries meant that I ended up having to make the gorgeous salmon I had on hand with sweet potatoes and the same Romaine side salad we had last night. Sweet potatoes don’t really go with salmon in my mind, and I hate to repeat a side two nights in a row, but I had no other green. Note on fish: I ALWAYS buy wild caught fish, from US waters. It really limits what I can find, but my husband puts his foot down on food that eats its own poop. I made my own sweet potato hash creation: Liz’s Sweet Potato Hash Ingredients Sweet potatoes Enough to feed your family…You’ll want leftovers to make with over easy eggs all week. Olive oil Salt and pepper Nutmeg Cinnamon Sage if you want it Instructions      1) Preheat th...