Dinner Last Night: Chipotle Salmon Tacos

How do I always forget about fish tacos until it's halfway through summer!  One of the season's delights when all the accompanying produce is flourishing, bountiful, and in season. These tacos were delish! I normally gravitate to white fish when we made fish tacos, but a friend recommended this recipe, and it was delightful. The crunch of the cabbage, the tang of the mango-avocado-cilantro slaw, and the spicy kick of the chipotle aioli packed a punch. Definitely making again!

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Dinner Last Night: Slow Cooker Korean Tacos

Crockpot for the win - yet again! These Korean pork tacos were a hit with my family, and pretty darn easy. Just chopped up matchstick carrots, Persian cucumbers, cilantro, and a little cabbage slaw, and pack in a tortilla. The perfect amount of sweet, spice, and crunch. 

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Dinner Last Night: Lamb and Mint Flatbread

After bookmarking this recipe and deciding it was a little too complex for a weeknight meal, I found a simplified version a la Rachael Ray which was just as tasty!  The yogurt + sauce + cuminy lamb + flatbread made for a delicious combination, which my kids devoured as well. Dinner for the win! Now this tabbouleh recipe I paired with it, that's another story, not a hit at all...Way too lemony. 

Anyone have a great, simple tabbouleh recipe?

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Dinner Last Night: Tofu Tikka Masala

This is one of my new favorite crockpot dinners - it's so easy and delicious. When making for my family, I omit the cayenne pepper, and my husband and I just add it in to our preferences. We serve over coconut rice and alongside Gwyneth's Indian creamed chicken from her It's All Easy cookbook.  An easy Indian dinner for the win!

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Dinner Last Night: Indian Butter Chicken

All this time I've been making chicken tikka masala - but I think Indian butter chicken is officially my new fave. This recipe was delish, and my kids gobbled it up too. Paired with frozen/reheate naan from Whole Foods, and Indian creamed chicken (with coconut milk) from Gwyneth's It's All Easy and we had ourselves a dinner! Makes great leftovers too - cha-ching!

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Dinner Last Night: Beef Biryani and Samosas with Apple Chutney

I'm trying to widen my kids and my family's culinary palette by trying new recipes at home that are unfamiliar to me and frankly a bit outside my comfort zone. I've found success in this by following recipes of bloggers and instagrammers whose recipes are consistently tasty, and adapting them to fit our dinner time routine.  Smitten Kitchen, Pinch of Yum, and Dinner, A Love Story are favorites when it comes to recipe consistency.

Last night, we tried Beef Biryani a la Pinch of Yum along with Indian Samosas and Apple Chutney (recipe c/o Tiffani Thiessen's cookbook, Pull Up A Chair).  I save these kinds of labor intensive, multi-course meals for weekends when I have my husband home to help out with the kids, so I can focus on prepping throughout the day.  I like to add in a kitchen hack here and there when it saves time or additional steps.  For example, I don't make my own samosa dough, I used frozen and defrosted puff pastry dough.  This goes over better with my kids as they like the fluffiness of puff pastry and saves me time and energy.  Plus, this apple chutney from Tiffani Thiessen's cookbook is sooo delicious!  It might be my favorite part of this entire meal.

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Dinner Last Night: Chicken Apple Wraps

This is a quick, easy, throw together dinner that makes for excellent leftovers!  I omitted the mint (since I didn't have any), raisins (because yuck!) and curry powder (mostly because I simply forgot) and added sliced almonds and I think it was even better than the original recipe.  I also used fresh mango instead of mango salsa which gave it a refreshing kick, highly recommend doing that as well.  Al in all, it was a crowd pleaser, even if my children deconstructed the entire salad and ate each component individually.  Oh well!

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Dinner Last Night: Black Bean Sweet Potato Enchiladas

Made this for dinner last night after viewing it on Liz's instagram - a delicious meat-free entree with minimal prep.  A great weeknight meal.  Too bad it wasn't a huge hit with my kids - one of my kiddos loves sweet potatoes so I thought this recipe would be a slam dunk but...no dice.  Maybe next time?  You snooze you lose, more leftovers for mom, I guess.

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Dinner Last Night: Slow Cooker Beef Mushroom Stroganoff

This cookbook is a weeknight savior. Everything I've tried thus far has been fairly quick, simple in ingredients and steps, and delicious!  One of our go-to weeknight meals is her slow cooker hamburger mushroom stroganoff. While only one of my kids eats mushrooms without a fight, the prep is fairly quick and the final product is flavorful, hearty, and makes for excellent leftovers.  To make it a tad healthier I sub in almond flour for white flour and plain or unsweeneted non-dairy yogurt for sour cream.  Serve over noodles or polenta with a green salad or in our case, roasted broccoli.  Voila!  Dinner is served.

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Dinner Last Night: Peanut Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Another new dinner victory - peanut chicken lettuce wraps!  I halved the chili garlic spice on my kids' portion as it was a little too much heat for their palates, but for us adults - it was perfect!  The spice of the chicken paired nicely with the soy-peanut sauce.  We served with tamari roasted broccoli and coconut rice.  Yum yum!

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Dinner Last Night: Crockpot Tuscan White Bean & Lemon Soup

This soup is beyond easy, dump everything in the crockpot and hours later, voila!  My favorite kind of dinner - set it and forget it!  It was flavorful, filling, and healthy.  A new favorite to kick off 2019.

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Dinner Last Night: Ina Garten's Pasta Fagioli

I've been searching for a delicious pasta fagioli recipe for a while now that's fairly easy, and I think Ina Garten's recipe is just the ticket - partly because she uses Goya's 16 Bean Soup mix which was conveniently available on amazon.

Now truth be told, I didn't follow the recipe to a T.  I usually forgot to preview recipes, and this one suggests soaking the beans overnight to soften.  Whoops.  When you read this at 1:30 pm and dinner's at 6:00, you gotta improvise.  I ended up just cooking the soup for longer on the stove and skipped the step of pureeing 1/3 of the beans, but ultimately, it all worked out, the beans were tender enough for consumption and a dinner crisis was averted. Phew! I also bought pre-diced pancetta to simplify, and basically it was a combine and wait kind of dinner...my favorite!  My kids eat it, though they needed some coaxing.  What is it about soup that scares my children, I tell ya!  Anyway, we licked the bowls clean, and had a few days of leftovers, always a plus.

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Dinner Last Night: Pork Ragu

I've been slacking on dinner last night posts lately...sorry about that.  I swear, after the holidays I'll catch up and post all the new recipes I've tried from my steady stream of cookbooks checked out from the library.  After much hype on several blogs, we tried Dinner A Love Story's pork ragu last night.  And it was superb!  It slow cooked all afternoon while my family and I had a Polar Express excursion.  We came home to a house punctuated with a delectable savory aroma, dinner fully cooked, and within minutes, bellies full.  Not sure if it was the hot sauce or the fennel seed, but the flavors were especially on point.  Definitely worth a bookmark for a rainy day.

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Cookbook Crush: Cravings Hungry For More // Dinner Last Night: Chicken and Dumplings

Do you follow Chrissy Teigen?  Sports illustrated model turned cookbook author, her debut cookbook came out in 2016 to rave reviews, and her sophomore cookbook, Cravings Hungry for More is just as appetizing.  I've always loved reading cookbooks cover to cover, and this one is an enjoyable read.  Teigen's personality resonates throughout, each recipe is marked by wry, witty, often self deprecating, and hilarious commentary.  Her food captions and blurbs alone indicate she doesn't take herself or fame too seriously, and I appreciate the blend of down home, kick back and nosh kind of recipes.

I I made her recipe for Chicken and Dumplings last week for dinner, and while my kids were extremely skeptical of dumplings in soup, my husband and I thought it was delicious.  The cookbook is organized by sections; breakfast, soups, sandwiches, dinner, snacks, Thai mom, and my personal favorite, "potatoes and their friends," a girl after my own heart.    

Recipes that had me salivating were the crispy buffalo smashies (potatoes), grilled eggplant with crispy shallots, jerk lamb chops with sweet + salty banana rice, coconut short rib curry, and of course, the everything bagel cream cheese breakfast bake.  If any recipe is going to make me return to dairy - pretty sure it will be that one.  This cookbook should be read with a knife and fork, because you'll want to dig right in!

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Dinner Last Night: Green Curry & Lime Chicken

I recently checked out Diane Sanfilipo's Practical Paleo cookbook for the library, and my mind is blown!  This is one of the most comprehensive Paleo resources I've ever seen.  It is beyond a cookbook, it gives a thorough explanation of of how eating a Paleo diet benefits numerous lifestyles and medical conditions.  It gives suggestions on lifestyle changes, and a meal-by-meal plan for beginning your journey to clean eating.  I perused the book cover to cover and I barely scratched the surface.

Anyway...I'm all about Diane's methodology, and since I've jumped on her bandwagon, I decided to start bookmarking recipes, among which included Thai Green Curry and Lime Chicken.  The marinade is savory, tart, and packs a citrus punch.  We left it in the broiler a bit longer to crisp up the skin for extra crunch.  Eaten with our favorite coconut rice and tamari-roasted broccoli, I think it's official we've added a new favorite to the dinner rotation.

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Dinner Last Night: Beef & Eggplant Fatteh

While perusing Nigella Lawson's At My Table, I came across a recipe for Beef and Eggplant Fatteh,. I was unfamiliar with the word "fatteh, but intrigued by the picture looked quite delicious. The base is pita bread, layered with cumin-coriander ground beef and eggplant, garlicky tahini-yogurt sauce, red pepper flakes, pomegranate seeds, toasted pine nuts, and shredded mint.  Even my husband who is an eggplant skeptic, devoured it before he even recognized eggplant as a primary ingredient.  Now, we ate this for a date dinner - so kids didn't have an opportunity to weigh in with their particulars, but in the future, I fully intend to brand this as Middle Eastern nachos to win them over.  

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Dinner Last Night: Baked Honey Cilantro Lime Salmon

Dinner last night was delicious and soooo incredibly easy, I must share with you!  Honey Cilantro Lime Salmon courtesy of Creme de la Crumb.  The original recipe calls to bake the salmon in foil, but skipped this step because foil + food is not good for our bodies.  But easy peasy, parchment substituted as a nice non-stick base just fine.  

The flavor was delicious!  I wasn't sure how honey would balance out with the fish + herbs, but it was subtle and gave it a pleasant sweetness.  Though truth be told, my kids were quite skeptical of the "green stuff" on top of their salmon.  We typically bake our salmon with a Sriracha, sesame oil, and olive oil marinade, and apparently this was too visually out of left field, protesting abound!  However, once we sold that there was honey in the sauce, it got at least one child willing and on board to eat the dinner.  Celebrate those small victories when you see them, amiright?

Ultimately, this will was delish and will be becoming more of a regular dinner in our home, if only to just desensitize my children to the green on top of food...

Happy eating!

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Dinner Last Night: Sausage + Mushroom Polenta

After falling down the Rachel Hollis rabbit hole after listening to her outstanding book, Girl, Wash Your Face, I learned that she started her career as a food blogger.  Who knew?!  On her website, The Chic Site, there was one of those attention grabbing posts that I always fall for "12 quick and easy dinners," and this meal in particular caught my eye, sausage and mushroom polenta.  I don't remember growing up with polenta, but after having a life changing polenta + pesto dish at a friend's wedding August 2016, I decided it's time to make some room for polenta in my life.

As for a kid-friendly meal, one loved the "cheesy rice," the name under which we sold the polenta, another dug the mushrooms, so they kind of a la carted the meal, but hey, we can't win them all!  Though I should note, it was a total hit with the husband!  Ultimately, quick and easy it was - definitely bookmark worthy for another time.

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Dinner Last Night: Caribbean Chicken and Rice Lettuce Wraps

Tried these Caribbean chicken and rice lettuce wraps last night and it was a hit!  To avoid turning on my oven, I improvised with the chicken, and instead threw two chicken breasts, herbs de provence, paprika, minced garlic, and coconut milk in the crock pot.  Ultimately I think it turned out great.  The boxed rice was splendidly easy - always nice - and the crunch of the lettuce wrap paired with the refreshing flavor of the mango salsa was perfection!  

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Dinner Last Night: Takeout Style Sesame Noodles with Cucumbers

We've had an abundance of cucumbers in our garden this summer.  A ton of cucumbers.  My husband has spent several nights in our hot, hot kitchen concocting batch after batch of pickles; some sweet, some bread-n-butter, some briny, some spicy...all of which are marinating in our fridge or filling up our pantry shelves, and still we have cucumbers.  

Time for a recipe that uses the word "cucumber" in the title. Thankfully, Deb of Smitten Kitchen always saves the day with takeout style sesame noodles with cucumbers.  And Deb, she's consistent, she has never let me down yet!  The recipe calls for thicker rice noodles, but I only had thin rice noodles on hand - which substituted just fine.  The sauce is kind of aaaaaamazing, it's like this peanutty, sesame-y, tahini-y blend of goodness.  I want to pour it on all my salads here on out.  Add a little chopped peanuts, cilantro, and allll the cucumbers, and we're in business.  I think our garden grown cucumbers were pretty stoked too, I mean really, how often do they get to be the star of the dinner show?! 

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