Fettuccini Carbonara with Asparagus and Mushrooms
Yup…I know. Traditional carbonara doesn’t have asparagus and mushrooms. But, sometimes a person does what’s necessary to make it better.
And use up what’s in the fridge.
Lemon Pepper Roasted Potatoes
My fascination with lemon pepper (huh, lemon. Go figure) started years ago, I think shortly after it hit the market. I found some recipe for a chicken dish with broccoli and rice. Those typically haven’t intrigued me, but this one wasn’t loaded with heavy crap. So I scraped and saved until I could afford to buy an extra spice, and tried it. I was hooked. Of course, we didn’t have internet, so you couldn’t just go looking for recipes so I started thinking up other things I could use it on. One of the first was grilled potatoes. We went camping and I had a small bag of little red potatoes. I par-cooked them, tossed them with butter and lemon pepper and threw them on the grill. The whole family loved them.
Since then, we also do them in the oven with whatever variety of potatoes we have on hand, cut in wedges, on a heavy baking sheet WITH SIDES. I have never served these to anyone who didn’t like them, and I have served them to a lot of people over the years. They are great with steak or fish, or whatever you choose to serve them with – chicken, pork, whatever. Or, all by their buttery, guilty selves….
Perfect Lemon Bars
I loooove lemon. There, I admitted it. In more recent years, I have reached a point where I love all citrus, at least all the ones I’ve tried. Lemons, limes, oranges, graprefruit, pumellos, ugli fruit… (I know, there are more). I think my taste buds belong where citrus grows. The rest of me, not so much. While I really do get tired of the cold winters of Michigan, I don’t tolerate the extreme heat well at all. One of my sisters lives in Florida. I love to visit, but I wouldn’t wanna live there. All that being said, lemons and limes are probably the dearest to me, maybe because they are so versatile and can add so much to so many foods and drinks. Which actually is kind of funny, since I never cared much for it as a kid. Back then it had to be chocolate, caramel or both (not to say these things are far down the list). Now it seems like I like everything dessert. Welllll, unless it has bananas. Those are jsut nasty.
Polish Plum Cake
Where I used to work, there was a bachelor engineer who enjoyed cooking. He liked to organize pot luck lunches, chili cook-offs, things like that. He got a Mexican pot luck going once, and everyone had so much fun finding and trying authentic mexican cuisine, we decided to try doing the same with other types of dishes. Eventually, we had a polish lunch. One of the guys found a recipe for plum cake (I think it may have been one of his first forays in the kitchen – he was a high school co-op), so he made that. The concept was good. The recipe he used was not. It was a heavy, dense cake and the plums sat on the top, sort of drying out there.
So I was making a glaze for pork today. The pork was far enough along there was no turning back. I get started on the glaze and realize…crap..I’m out of chili sauce, a key ingredient in the glaze.
Well, it being Sunday, and we were just hanging around the house, finishing up the pool set up, planting some things, you can guess there was NO WAY I was dressed for running to the store. Small town, everyone knows everyone and all their business too. Not. Gonna. Happen. Maybe I can do something else with the pork. Wait a minute, how hard can it be to make a small amount of chili sauce?
Shrimp in Light Lemon Cream Sauce with Fresh Asparagus
It is late spring in Michigan. It’s beautiful outside, finally! The wild mushrooms are sprouting up like crazy, and so is our asparagus. I’ve given some to my parents, roasted some late last week for dinner, grilled a big batch over the weekend when two of the kids were here from Grand Rapids, and I still had a fresh (small) batch to pick yesterday. So I made one of hubby’s favorites – shrimp. And he got a double dose of favorite since he LOVES asparagus.
See that picture? That is creamy, rich, tangy deliciousness. BONUS? – No cream added.
Chili Lime Marinated Pork Chops
One of my favorite types of flavors is the southwest and Mexico. Avocados, salsa, limes, I could keep going on and on….OH! and the tequila, margarita’s…mmmmmm.
I’ve been to Mexico several times for my previous job, and I would walk back just for the food…. For the most part, my husband agrees with me, except the avocados. I’ve never seen him try them, but he swears he has and does not like them. I’m not so sure……
Anyway, we both agree on the majority of those flavors, and he likes spicy (just about) anything. This marinade gave both of us happy faces. It is quick and easy to put together, and you can vary the amounts of the spices to suit your own tastes. I didn’t add any real heat to this, as it just wasn’t what I was after that day. I was looking more for the citrus to come through (Actually, I have been consuming citrus any way I can get it all through the end of winter, spring, and now into summer, but maybe that was due to Michigan’s never-ending winter this year, I don’t know). Anyway, I used it for pork chops, but it would be equally awesome deliciousness on chicken or shrimp. It goes together very fast. After you squeeze the limes.
Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake
Sour Cream Streusel Coffee Cake
I have made many, many coffee cakes. My better half likes to take them in his lunch for a “breakfast” break a little while after he gets to work. He likes coffee cakes because they’re easy for him to eat at work. Apples in almost anything are a bonus for him, so I always have an apple cinnamon coffee cake on standby.
Mom’s Meatloaf
Let’s talk about meatloaf. There are those who absolutely LOVE it (like me), and there are those who don’t. I often wonder if those who don’t love it have ever had really GOOD meatloaf. I’m sure there are many that have and still don’t care for it. I will never totally understand that.
But, to each his own. There are obviously millions of versions out there. I’ve tried a few different ones, but this one is always the one I come back to. One of my ultimate comfort foods, so I don’t change it really. I mean, I love mexican and tex mex food, southwest, whatever you choose to call it. I’ve tried making meatloaf with those types of flavors. It’s good, but I guess meatloaf is one of those sacred things for me, because this is the one I grew up on. Mom’s. In getting to this point, I will admit that it took me quite a while to make this as good as my mom does, and it took me forever to figure out why that was. She told me numerous times how she did it, but mine never tasted like hers. At one point, I gave up. Mine was always too dry, it never tasted quite as flavorful as hers. I initially blamed it on her “magic” pan.
Santa Fe Soup
This is a very simple but delicious soup, similar to chili. I have no idea where it originated, I got the recipe from my sister during a visit with her in Florida. Of course, a Michigan person visits Florida and the weather turns cold!
So, when we got back to her house from an excursion, we were pretty chilled, so she threw together this soup. Almost literally, threw it together. It’s that easy. My granddaughter was around 7 at the time. She is now 11 and she still loves this soup. She used to call it “that soup we had in Florida”. It’s become a tradition here on Halloween, (getting cold in Michigan by then) our kids often bring the grandkids come back to our house after trick or treating and have a bowl of soup. This is one of their favorites.