Weekly Gourmet

Today was 40 degrees and my husband brought home some baby pink tulips for me, so now I am in full-on February-Is-Basically-Spring Mode. Tonight's dish featured a few nods to spring veggies plus some hunks of pork. Like porky February plus Marchy veggies. And the best part is that I got this one from my favorite section of the Food Network magazine, where they offer low calorie dinners (under 500 calories) AND IT STILL HAS CARBS! Farro are carbs...gluten FREE carbs actually! I win again! What's my prize? Am I gluten free now? No. I hope not. Maybe just accepted as a leader of the gf society or something. Honorable member. It can be dairy-free too if you omit the pecorino romano or use your strange dairy-free cheese alternatives. One change in my life is that my kids started back up with "activities." Joy. My prime cooking time is now carpooling time. Fine, it's great to see the excitement on their little faces to be at piano and swimming. OK not really piano, but ...

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 Tuesday. Probably Taco Tuesday for you, but for us, it's Lentil Soup With An Egg In It Tuesday a/k/a Vegetarian Torture Day! Don't stop reading! I swear, lentils are friends, not tiny beads of torture. They are a delicious, inexpensive source of protein with endless shelf lives. Paired with an egg? This is a DOUBLE protein meal if you think about it. Like putting a chicken wing on top of a hamburger patty. Or "surf and turf with a spoon," if you will. AND, since it's such a healthy dinner, I let everyone dip warm, crusty garlic bread in it. My kids are much more amenable to trying fearsome foods while their hands are filled with hunks of bread, like little edible carbohydrate safety blankets. Actually, the middle kid brought lentil soup to school in a pink princess thermos today. She may have a bit of a bathroom situation later tonight, but I still giggle thinking about her like a small Sicilian peasant child in a kerchief, spooning in her lentils, hoping...

Today is Tuesday. While we were renovating our house, we lived with my in-laws for seven (7) months. I LIVED WITH MY MOTHER-IN-LAW for seven incredibly short, easy breezy, fun-filled months. No I'm just kidding. Honestly it was fine and I recommend to anyone that if you and your in-laws...don't...always recognize each other's finer points, go move into their home for an extended period of time. Now I am their favorite child AND I am able to freely yell at, argue with, and lovingly make fun of my mother-in-law like she's my own mom. Lots of exaggerated eye rolling. It's swell. And I even got her to start keeping her butter out on the counter! See, she listens to me. Good Rose.  My one condition for moving into someone else's house was that I had to be in charge of the kitchen. You should have seen me lugging over bins of pans and spices and utensils that I thought I couldn't live without (and it was only supposed to be for eight weeks!), it was hilarious...li...

Today is Tuesday. As much as I LOVE to cook, I conversely HATE wasting food. I mean I have anchovies in my freezer. I compost. That being said, leftovers were piling up around here like laundry, so Mama took the night off. But what kind of professional, famous blogger would I be if I just left all my little bloglings hanging? So, tonight I decided to get my creative juices and my broiler (and my smoke alarm) going and whip up an original salsa for this week's upcoming taco night. (We don't confine our tacos to any specific night of the week around here.) Lately I have had this recurring fantasy/idea for somebody to make and serve me my usual spicy margarita, but with something sweet in it as well, something like a strawberry. And THEN I wondered to myself...what if my salsa had both jalapeños and strawberries? What would happen then? What if... what if... there were strawberries INSTEAD of tomatoes?! I mean they are both red, right? Plus sometimes I take issue with non-August/S...

Today is Tuesday. This dinner was sooo good. I made pan-roasted chicken drumsticks. I wish everyone would give bone-in chicken more of a chance. It’s so much more flavorful, and it’s less expensive. I picked this particular recipe for two reasons: 1) It calls for leeks and I bought leeks on a whim yesterday– they were the last bunch left and something about that made me think they were a hot button item I had to snatch up for myself– even though they were not on sale. And 2) It calls for bacon. Now that my husband is working from home, he keeps taking out pounds of bacon every other day or so. It’s always just sitting there in the fridge, which it never used to be. Leeks + bacon = delicious flavor. Done and done. Reprinted with permission from Food Network Magazine . Pan-Roasted Chicken with Leeks and Green Beans Active Time: 25 minutes Total Time: 40 minutes Serves: 4 Ingredients 1 lb. green beans, ends trimmed (I ended up incorporating our side into our main.) 3 s...