Night 5

Recipe 2

Smoky Turkey Shepherd's Pie

Matt rating ***1/2

Ingredients used:

Course salt

Idaho potatoes

EVOO

Bacon

Ground turkey

Smoked paprika

Course black pepper

Thyme leaves

Onion

Carrots

Celery

Red bell pepper

Frozen peas

Flour

Chicken stock

Sour cream

Egg

Unsalted butter

Chives (fresh from my garden!)

This is definitely a comfort food recipe, but one you can feel good about eating. Turkey and lots of veggies, but some bacon to add some flavor. It was a pretty easy meal to make, but lots of chopping of veggies involved which took the most time. It took me about 45 minutes to complete this meal, but it was worth the time involved. Matt gave it three and a half stars and said that he would eat it again...he's not big into veggies. I would have given it four stars myself. There was so much flavor in this recipe that you couldn't even tell that it was ground turkey that was used. Since there are only two of us, I could have frozen half of the dish for later use, but I'll just have leftovers tomorrow. I thought it was so good that I had two helpings!

I'll be taking tomorrow night off as we are having dinner over at a friend's house, so you will see my next installment on Sunday. Have a great weekend everybody!

Mandy

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Night 4

Recipe 123

Steaks with Two Tapenades, Arugula Salad, and Crusty Bread

Matt rating ****

Ingredients used:

Kalamata black olives

Anchovy fillets

Capers

Flat leaf parsley

Lemons

Jarred roasted red bell peppers

Basil pesto

Medallions of beef tenderloin or New York strip steaks (I used eye of round steaks cause they were on sale)

EVOO

S&P

Arugula (I used red-leaf lettuce since I still had it on hand)

Parmigiano-Reggiano

Crusty bread

How can you go wrong with steak, right? Well, a smoke filled house is one way!!! The directions call for a "screaming hot pan" to cook the steaks in so I cranked it up. My entire upstairs filled with smoke in a matter of seconds, but once I blasted the fan and opened the sliding glass door we were in the clear. The steaks ended up with a great caramelized crust and were super juicy, and the tapenades were really tasty. Of course I didn't tell Matt that anchovies were in one of them, and guess which one he picked that he like the most...the fishy one! We are making progress, one meal at a time :) It was a hard choice for me to pick which tapenade I like the best (one was an olive/anchovy tapenade and the other was roasted red pepper). Both were really good. I applaud Matt for trying everything, but he has always said that if steak needs a topping, then it's not a good steak. He likes his naked as long as they are cooked right.

I think the best part about this entire meal is that it took all of about 15 total minutes to make! And cleanup was the easiest it's been all week.

Well my baby is getting cranky and needs mommy time. As always, thanks for stopping by!

Mandy

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Night 3

Recipe 7

Smoky Chipotle Mac-n-Cheddar with Tomato and Chorizo

Matt rating *****

Ingredients used:

Coarse salt

Elbow macaroni

EVOO

Unsalted butter

Onion

Flour

Cayenne pepper

Paprika

Whole milk

Chicken stock

Smoked Cheddar

Dijon mustard

Freshly ground black pepper

Chorizo

Canned diced fire-roasted tomatoes

As you can see, we all have the majority of these ingredients on hand, so once again this was a very easy recipe. It is definitely a grown-up version of mac-n-cheese...not for the timid taste buds! It had a great kick to it but not so much that it made our noses run.

I always have a problem making home-made cheese sauce and it never turns out thick enough. I think that if there would have been a little less milk or chicken stock in the sauce that it would have been a little thicker. I ended up using about 3/4 of the cheese sauce along with the chorizo and tomatoes to be mixed with the macaroni. Matt had a great idea to use the rest of the cheese sauce as a dip later on, so I'll end up freezing it for that purpose. Matt actually agreed to eat this as leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I'll freeze the rest of the macaroni for maybe a Saturday lunch sometime.

A note on the chorizo, the recipe calls for a chorizo with casings that you would remove and dice, but I've only ever been able to find ground chorizo sausage which melts in the pan almost into a sauce. It turned out great in the recipe so I'm not complaining. If you've seen the other kind locally, drop me a note so I know where to look!

One other thing to mention - although I won't list an entire recipe on my blog (again, due to copyright rules), I'm pretty sure that you would be able to find these recipes on the Food Network website or Rachael Ray's website. Or, you could just go get the cookbook :)!

Mandy Rae

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Night 2

Recipe 332

Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf Patties with Pan Gravy and Sour Cream-Tomato Smashed Potatoes

Matt rating ***

Ingredients used:

Red-skinned potatoes

Ground beef

Plain bread crumbs

Milk

Egg

Grill seasoning

Ground allspice

Tomato paste

Onion

Bacon

EVOO

Unsalted butter

Sour cream

S&P

Tomatoes

Flour

Chicken stock

Spicy brown mustard

Worcestershire sauce

Flat-leaf parsley

Although this recipe called for what seems like a lot of ingredients, I happened to have all of them on hand. It was a pretty easy meal to make but took longer than 30 minutes, but that was due in part to going back and forth from a fussy baby to the kitchen.

Matt gave the meal three stars saying it was "average". He said the tomatoes in the smashed potatoes took away from the meal (but that is because he hates tomatoes), but that the bacon made up for it. I will give him credit though because he didn't pick out one tomato! He said the meat loaf patties alone wouldn't have been as good without the bacon. All in all, we would consider this recipe a keeper! I would rate this meal with three and a half stars...just a little better than average. But hey, it's still better than fast food, and we have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Mandy Rae

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Night 1

Recipe 294

Chicken No. 14,754-Chicken Bustard (in Basil-Mustard Sauce)

Matt rating ****

So I was able to start tonight as we have a sick baby in the house and were unable to attend the family dinner we were supposed to go to. Right after church I headed to the local Sunflower Market to get my produce and stuff to make salad to go along with tonight's dinner.

I chose tonight's meal based on the fact that I got a 5 pound package of chicken when I went grocery shopping yesterday. Because of copyright rules I won't post the entire recipe here, but I'll note the ingredients used.

Chicken

Thyme

Lemon

S&P

EVOO (If you are a Rachael Ray fan you know what this term is!)

Chicken stock

Dijon mustard

Sour cream

Onion

Garlic

Pesto

Basil (fresh from my garden!)

This meal was very simple to make and turned out delicious. The mustard and lemon flavors were dominate and were so good paired with the chicken. I placed the chicken on a bed of egg noodles (not in the recipe) and topped with the sauce. I added a simple salad of red leaf lettuce (on sale at the Sunflower Market for 88 cents!) and a lemon vinaigrette to compliment the lemon and thyme flavors in the sauce. Matt and I both thought this was a great recipe and definitely a keeper!

I will post a "Matt rating" for every recipe, with a possible five stars(*****). Keep in mind that Matt is a very picky eater so I will note my agreement or disagreement as necessary ;-)

Not sure what's for dinner tomorrow night, although I have a feeling it will call for ground beef, since I picked up four pounds of it yesterday! I guess I'd better get back to my kitchen and freeze all the extra meat I bought!

Mandy Rae

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365: No Repeats!

Thank you so much for visiting my blog! I have been inspired by a movie called Julie/Julia (which I admit at this point I've only seen the previews for) to attempt to go through Rachael Ray's entire cookbook titled "365: No Repeats". Now that I am a stay at home mom, we are cutting corners every way we can to save money. One area that will be drastically affected is our naughty eating out habit, which we got into almost a year ago when I got pregnant and was too tired, sick, or on bed rest to cook. I've been a Rachael Ray fan for years and have 5 or 6 of her cookbooks. She took me from making pre-packaged frozen lasagna to homemade goodness in 3o minutes per meal! I have her knife set, pots and pans, and even her tongs. I'm not an obsessed fan by any means, but her cooking style suits me perfectly.

My husband, Matt, has agreed to try everything I make, which is a huge thing for him since he has the taste buds of a child and has rules like "I won't eat anything that swims, is a fungus, or is squishy". This makes dinner time difficult when I haven't been able to cook with tomatoes, mushrooms, or seafood! He seems to be as excited about this as I am though and I'm sure will be a good sport (he may even acquire a taste for things that he doesn't think he likes!).

I've done most of my grocery shopping this morning to get my "staple items" that Rachael recommends. I'm going to hold off until Monday before I get any produce though since that will be my official start date. The picture you see is my pantry which I've completely cleaned out and rearranged. Having it look so nice and neat inspires me to cook! I don't want to wait until Monday but we're having dinner with friends tonight and tomorrow night, so I guess I'll have to be patient. I'll post a picture of my fridge when I get the produce on Monday, and will try to post a picture of every meal I make.

I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that I can go 365 days straight without a break for going out to dinner with friends or going on vacation, but I do plan on going through the entire cookbook. Please follow me on this journey to see how long it takes to get through it!