Tag Archives: dinner ideas

MLK day

Posted on January 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Wahoo! A day off! It’s always great to have Monday off. First you get a long weekend and then you face a short work week when you get back on Tuesday. It’s also really nice when on the day you have off it is almost 60 degrees outside! I got in a nice long run, did some pilates, and then hit the supermarket for tonight’s dinner: Red Coconut Curry with Shrimp and Vegetables. I was actually the visionary behind this one, but got some assistance from Greg because he is an excellent shrimp cooker. I also have to give credit to Thai Kitchen for creating and selling this curry paste. This took a lot of the trickery out of creating our own curry, which we lack the skills, knowledge and time for.

I started off by chopping the veggies:

On the cutting board: carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, onion, ginger, and garlic. To the left of the cutting board: water chestnuts and bamboo shoots.

I sauteed the onion, garlic, ginger and mushrooms in a combination of chili oil and sesame oil until they were softened. I then added the coconut milk, curry paste, fish sauce and brown sugar as the recipe on the jar suggested.

Once that got nice and hot I added the broccoli and carrot and let it simmer for about ten minutes.

I then added the water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and shrimp. The shrimp do not need long to cook before they turn pink. Once they do turn pink, they are done!

This is great served over rice or by itself.

Topped with some fresh green onions and basil

Recipe for Red Coconut Curry Shrimp

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Posted in Seafood

Tagged coconut milk, curry, dinner ideas, low carb, seafood, shrimp, Thai

Chicken Carbonara Casserole

Posted on January 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

It’s Thursday night and we have made some really good meals this week. Energy and motivation are slightly down for me, but not for Greg. He was the creator of this dish, which utilized some of the leftovers we had in the fridge. He ended up making what he dubbed, “chicken carbonara casserole”. Once you read the recipe you will see that it is a perfect title- except if you are expecting to see fettuccine noodles or some other pasta derivative. We aim to eat low-carb for most of the week, but this could have easily and quite tastily been served over said carbs. Honestly though, I didn’t even miss them. This was that good.

He started out the casserole by chopping up the leftover broccoli we had from the broccoli cheese soup, blanching it, and placing it on the bottom of the casserole dish.

Then added some chopped mushrooms, which he sauteed first with some oil, salt, and pepper.

Then he re-heated a leftover bacon and onion mixture and placed it in the casserole.

bacon makes everything better

He then chopped up some leftover chicken from last night and added that.

Now on to the good stuff: the carbonara sauce. For this he made a basic roux with some roasted garlic, added half and half and skim milk, “Italian” mix cheese and some grated Parmesan, and generous amounts of ground black pepper.

He then poured the gooey cheese sauce over the casserole and added another layer of the Parmesan.

Lastly, he baked it for about ten minutes, and broiled it for an additional 5 to get the top nice and brown.

After a garnish of fresh chopped tomato and basil, dinner was served!

After dinner we continued to work on the honeymoon planning. I think we have narrowed it down to the Domican Republic, but we still have some details to figure out, like which resort to go to. It’s hard to tell from the websites what they are really like, but at some point we are just going to have to pick one and trust our instincts. My only criteria is that I would like the resort to have a swim-up bar (priorities people!). Oh, and also that it’s clean, has decent food, and has some sort of nightlife 🙂 Hopefully, we will find just what we are looking for very soon and then we can really start to get excited for it! Below is the recipe for tonight’s dinner. I have to admit we did not measure out everything so these are my best guesses. We used the half and half and milk mixture to cut some fat but you can use 3 cups of any dairy that you like. There should at least be some fat in the dairy though as skim only may be too thin.

Recipe for Chicken Carbonara Casserole

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Posted in Chicken

Tagged bacon, cheese, chicken, dinner ideas, homemade, Italian

Thyme Roasted Chicken

Posted on January 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

As soon I as walked in the door this evening I was pleasantly greeted by the aromatics of this dish! Greg prepared the chicken by stuffing it with some sprigs of thyme and putting a serious coating of McCormick’s rotisserie chicken seasoning all over the bird. I definitely recommend this seasoning!

The chicken had a lovely self-timer on it and took about 2 and half hours to roast. We added some of my homemade creamed spinach and Greg made one of his favorites- instant mashed potatoes (which he spiced up with some remaining thyme and red pepper flakes).

Bird in the oven

We have made roasted chicken so many times before, but this was definitely the best one yet. It was so juicy and flavorful. The recipe for the creamed spinach is very easy also and you can pretty much use whatever cheese you have in the fridge, though the recipe calls for parmesan.

Recipe for Eileen’s Creamed Spinach

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Posted in Chicken, Sides

Tagged chicken, dinner ideas, low carb, low fat, thyme

The Perfect Sunday

Posted on January 11, 2010 | Leave a comment

Even Bogie enjoyed the down time!

Today was the perfect lazy day. We lounged around all day, watched football and braised some beef! The first game was very disappointing as New England just didn’t show up at all. The second game started off similarly but became a really good game and it was nice to just lay around all day together.

It’s NFL playoff time! For the third year in a row Greg and I decided to do an NFL playoff pool where we pick each playoff game’s winner and over/under based on the spread. At the end of the playoffs, the loser has to take the winner out for a nice dinner. This year’s dinner will be to Black Market Bistro in Kensington. I have been very successful in years past, but got off to a rough start yesterday going 1-3. Greg went 4-0 so I had some ground to make up today. Unfortunately only one out of my four picks differed from his, but it was a winner! Going into next week Greg has 5 and I have 3.

For dinner, we decided to break in our new dutch oven! We scoured the internet for recipes and ultimately went with this one by Emeril because this was the kind of meat they had at the grocery store. Also, the dutch oven is made by Emeril too, creepy.

This was one of the only times that we’ve followed a recipe and the cooking times were spot-on. That was exciting and we actually got to eat a Sunday dinner before 8pm! It came out really tender and it was very easy to shred. It needed a little seasoning, but overall it came out great and was very tasty!

At the half-way point

After shredding the beef, we put it back in the pot. Here is our version of Beer-braised pot roast in the dutch oven

the final product

Recipe for Beer-Braised Pot Roast and Vegetables

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Posted in Beef

Tagged Beef, dinner ideas, homemade, roast

Souper Saturday

Posted on January 11, 2010 | 1 comment

Ok. I know this title is a little much, but I assure you they won’t all be this awesome. Just kidding… I just couldn’t resist. This Saturday was pretty great though. We woke up after a good night’s sleep, which is always much needed after the work week. We spent much of the day hanging out and got in an episode of Big Love before football came on. It’s freezing outside so I decided to make broccoli cheddar soup for dinner, using this recipe from CDKitchen.com, which attempts to mimic Panera’s version.

This recipe came out great! The last time I made it, I tried the whole pureeing thing. I really didn’t like the consistency of it, as the tiny bits of broccoli gave it an odd texture. This time around, I cut up the broccoli into really tiny pieces and did not puree it. This left the soup velvety and thick. I think it was very similar to Panera’s version and it was delicious! Next time, if I add chicken again, I will probably make the broth a little thinner by adding another cup of chicken stock and another cup of half and half so it will be more soupy. With the chicken and all the veggies it was pretty thick, but still really good and overall, pretty easy!