50's house wife update...

Wait for it..... I MADE DINNER 4 NIGHTS IN A ROW!!!! I know! Can you believe it? My husband couldn't. In matter of fact when I pointed out that I had done this he was like no way, prove it. So he made me list off the dinners I had made - he has no faith in me. I was going to make dinner 7 days in a row but last night his family all ended up going out to eat so we went and tonight is the red dawn meeting. And the best thing about it was I made almost all of it from what I had in my fridge/freezer/pantry. I'm so freakin' proud of myself because that is what I'm terrible at. I have no imagination and so it's hard to put meals together with what I've got. My pantry and freezer are better stocked now so I'm learning. Here is what I did:

Night 1: breaded chicken breasts, rice pilaf, and green beans. ALL from my pantry and freezer :)

Night 2: Ground beef nachos with bean dip. Everything came from home except I had Brian drop by the store on the way home for salsa. For the bean dip I just added cheese and salsa to refried beans and heat up. For the ground beef I used frozen hamburger patties that we had in our freezer and just added taco seasoning and chili powder. Drizzled the beef, lots of cheese and salsa over chips and baked in the oven until the cheese was melted. TA DA! It was actually really yummy!

Night 3: BBQ! We went and bought a $35 dollar charcoal grill from Lowe's and they had a deal for buy one bag of charcoal and get one free - so we scored on that. We had people over and Brian only gave me 30 min to get ready to cook so I did run to the grocery store and bought boneless skinless chicken breasts and some salad. We had BBQ chicken, our favorite salad and corn.

Night #4: Tacos. I used some of the left overs from night #2 (bean dip and beef), cut up some ice burg lettuce that i needed to use or it was going to go bad, and prepared the chicken. i had put two frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts in the crockpot before i left to run errands. when it was done cooking - which was right when i needed to start dinner (oh yes, i even planned that - i'm doing pretty good!) i just shredded up the chicken and added taco seasoning. there wasn't enough chicken juices in the pan to rehydrate the shredded chicken so i used a little chicken broth. voila! i had shredded chicken and beef tacos for dinner. my mom taught me that i can freeze tortillas (because there is only brian and i we don't eat enough of stuff before it goes bad so i'm starting to learn what can be frozen and what can't) so i had just set those out earlier so they would defrost. i served with sour cream and salsa.

Day #5: I baked those yummy chocolate/mint cookies Aubrie had posted on her blog and took some to my friend Sarah who is studying for her state nursing boards - I remembered how stressed Aubrie was so I figured Sarah needed some cookies. She lives really close so it also gave Zach and I a good excuse to get out of the house and walk over to hers. On the way back we stoped by grandma's house. Seriously I really do love that they all live so close. That night I was going to use the rest of my left overs from tacos and the rest of the iceburg lettuce to make a taco salad (I'm being frugal here.... trying to use everything before it goes bad and NOT having to feed it to my stupid dog because it's been in the fridge for too long) but his Dad called and we ended going out to eat. At least I did have a plan and I had made dessert :)

Another thing - Brian had bought a TON of meat from the "meat lady". She is basically like a Swan's man but she only sells flash frozen meat. Well Brian loves this lady and it is actually a really good deal.... but holy cow! Literally.... holy cow - we had so much meat in our freezer. And we're trying to be more frugal so he was really "emphasizing" that we needed to use it before it got to old, tough and freezer burnt. So I went on a mission to use as much of this as possible to prove that I could. The ground beef I used for the nights above was defrosted hamburger patties we got from the meat lady. So I made a garlic and rosemary beef salad with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing and asparagus. I served Naan on the side (Indian flat bread - soo sooooooo yummy. It's my new favorite bread of all time). Here is my food network wannabe picture :)

I also made homemade teriyaki steak rice bowls which turned out pretty good! They would have been better with chicken though. I highly advise that you use sticky rice with that kind of a thing - it's tastier and soaks up sauces better. Here is the great homemade teriyaki sauce recipe i got from my mom.

Teriyaki marinade:

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup water

1 cup soy sauce

few sprigs of fresh rosemary (optional)

rub your meat in garlic break seasoning and then marinade your meat in the sauce in the fridge for 24 hours. cook your meat how you would like. for the rice bowls i had thinly sliced the beef and then treated with the rub and marinade. I then cooked it over the stove in a sauce pan until cooked through. This the most amazing marinade for teriyaki steaks if you are going to grill - that's what my mom uses this recipe for and Logan would give an arm and leg for her to make it every night he loves it so much. Then pour the marinade into a small saucepan and boil for 20 min. Use as a sauce. It's really good and super easy! No need to buy teriyaki sauce ever again!