cooking lately

Cooking Lately: July

Posted on by nyfoodiefamily@gmail.com

Our lax summer schedules have afforded me the luxury of being able to cook intricate recipes. However, with the sweltering temps, I’ve had no desire to turn the oven on. Instead of the weekly menu plans that I used to post here many moons ago, I thought I’d share a monthly “Cooking Lately” post.

I want to share only the good recipes that have graced our dinner table throughout the month. I know how difficult it is figuring out what to cook for dinner. While I do plan out a menu for the week to help keep me sane and organized, not all the recipes I choose are winners! I plan on sharing just the recipes that we have tried and are family approved!

Since Trader Joe’s just opened a new location nearby, I feel like I’ll be eating and cooking a lot of their prepared foods and ingredients. This will be especially true in the fall which is our family’s busy season. Fellow Trader Joe’s fans may be interested in this Instagram account that I found. I haven’t made anything yet, but I have bookmarked a bunch of Anna’s recipes!

Just a note about our family’s diet and the types of recipes that I cook: my teenage daughter is a vegetarian. My husband and I are both pescatarians, although he eats a lot less seafood than I do. My teenage son is the only meat eater in the house, so you won’t find any meat recipes here. You’ll find vegetarian, sometimes vegan and the occasional pescatarian recipes.

Here are some of our July recipe recommendations: 

Blueberry French Toast Casserole – This month we celebrated my son’s 14th birthday with a brunch-themed family celebration. Breakfast is his favorite meal. Among several dishes, I made this Blueberry French Toast Casserole that everyone was raving about. 

Creamy Garlic Butter Tuscan Salmon – My husband and I had a rare weeknight where it was just the two of us for dinner. We made this recipe with Parmesan Spinach Couscous. This was such a tasty dish but I think I’ll serve it over pasta next time.

Halloumi Hummus Bowls – I used Trader Joe’s Pearled couscous. Instead of halloumi I used crumbled feta which is a cheaper and easier to find alternative. I added some red onion and I thought it needed a dressing so we topped our bowls with Wishbone Lemon Vinaigrette. This recipes has little to no actual cooking involved and is perfect for hot summer nights.

Peach Goat Cheese Salad – I made this salad for lunch one week and it will keep making appearances until peach season is over. There’s a bit of prep with the ingredients but it’s so tasty! And it’s a fraction of the cost to make it at home versus buying a salad for lunch.

Sheet Pan Cauliflower Fajitas – These fajitas are on repeat in our house and I probably make them about once a month. They are easy to make and a quick meal. To save time, I sometimes purchase a packet of fajita seasoning or use the Penzeys fajita seasoning, when I have it. I serve these with sour cream, salsa and/or guacamole.

Smoky Shiitake Quesadillas with Avocado Cream Sauce – My husband ended up cooking this dinner, since I was at our daughter’s summer league field hockey game. Instead of shiitake mushrooms I had bought regular white button mushrooms that worked perfectly fine in this recipe. The avocado cream and pickled onions really helped make the dish.

Summer Coconut Chickpea Curry – This recipe is a great way to use some of the summer zucchini and squash that always seems to be abundant around this time of year. Some of the edits I made to this recipe include omitting the tahini and the halloumi cheese. I served the curry over basmati rice with some store-bought naan.

Quick and Easy Meals

Usually once a week, and sometimes more, I have a quick and easy meal. These meals use either prepared foods or require little to no prep. This month’s quick and easy meals included:

*Pierogies and roasted broccoli

*Breakfast burritos – (scrambled eggs, cheese, hash brown and chorizo rolled in a tortilla served with salsa and sometimes prepared guacamole, if I have it)

*Burgers and fries (I use whatever burgers I find on sale – Beyond burgers, Boca Burgers, etc.).

What have you been cooking lately?

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Cooking Lately {May 2019}

Posted on by nyfoodiefamily@gmail.com

Here is the monthly round up of some of the meals that we cooked in May. Although we cooked almost every week night, I’ve only posted the dinners that the family really enjoyed. There were a lot of tasty recipes this month and hopefully this gives you some new dinner ideas!

Beef and Broccoli – I’ve made beef and broccoli many times, but this was a new to us recipe. I roasted the broccoli in the oven and added it to the beef and sauce mixture at the end. This was a tad on the sweet side, but was tasty. I served it with rice.

Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole – This is a low-carb casserole with a tasty sauce. I have to admit that I did miss the carbs. I needed pasta, rice or even potatoes to go with this, which I didn’t make. I served this with some veggies.

Chicken Tikka Masala Flatbreads – These were so tasty! And really easy to make too. I actually cooked the ground chicken the night before, knowing the next night we would be in a rush to eat. Then it was almost all just assembling the flatbreads and warming them up in the oven. This will definitely be a recipe repeat.

Cornbread Taco Bake – We love all things taco, but I’m always looking for new takes on the dish. This was a tasty meal that was easy to put together. This is a great fall/cool weather comfort food meal.

Burst Tomato and Bacon Rigatoni – I think this was one of the rare times that a Rachael Ray recipe actually took only 30 minutes to make. This was the first time I bought red pesto but I really liked the flavor it added to this dish and will likely buy it again. I used kale instead of swiss chard. I also cooked the pasta separately. Even though the recipe is a one pot meal, I haven’t had luck with pasta coming out well in one pot recipes. This was really tasty and I think would taste even better with ripe, summer cherry tomatoes.

Caprese Turkey Burgers – After last month’s burger overload, these were the only burgers I made this month. The hardest part was defrosting the spinach and squeezing out all of the water! The tomatoes had to be squished down to stay on the burger. Overall, this was a tasty burger that we all enjoyed.

Instant Pot Chicken Paprikash – I haven’t made an Instant Pot meal in awhile. We’ve been using the Instant Pot weekly to hard boil eggs and we always make our mashed potatoes in it. We just hadn’t cooked a dinner in awhile. The only change to this recipe I’d try next time is to use boneless thighs, as I dislike eating chicken off the bone. But the sauce was good and we just had to cook egg noodles to serve the chicken and sauce over.

One-Pan French Onion Chicken Gnocchi Bake – Warning, this meal did take a little bit of time to make. Caramelizing the onions requires a half hour and then the dish has to bake for 20 minutes. The recipe calls for cooked, shredded chicken, which my husband prepped the night before we made this. This dish is not photogenic at all. Nor does it look like the pictures in the recipe. However, the flavors were delicious. This is one of those comfort food meals that I’ll likely make again in the fall or winter.

30 Minute Cajun Butter Steak and Peppers – This dish was quick and easy and spot on with the time as well. I omitted the cayenne pepper and the fresh herbs and avocado. The seasoning blend of the steak was tasty and flavorful. We had burritos the night before I made this and my daughter put all of her steak, peppers and rice into a tortilla.