I got a new cookbook -- Ina Garten's 8th -- and dinner (some from the book) is in the oven -- cherry tomatoes provencal casserole, crispy English potatoes (but does one really NEED a recipe for that?) and oven baked applesauce. A pork tenderloin will be the meat. It's Sunday and a Sunday dinner!

So who's cooking this month?

Martha

well, tonight we had trick or treat so for the 39th year in a row, I made "GHOULash" it's just shell macaroni, ground beef, diced tomatoes, some onion and spaghetti sauce, but the family would be heartbroken if it didn't show up on halloween.


Last night I took chicken breast and cut it into chunks, then mixed it with some regular (hang my head in shame stove top stuffing) and baked them together for about 45? minutes. I made a VAT of the stuff and it was eaten in one sitting.

Pot roast was on sale so I'll do that tomorrow probably, and I have some smoked sausage around for our "superman sausage" on the next real cold day.

November is mostly casseroles and inexpensive stuff before TG and then YAYYY on the Saturday after TG we get to have turkey tettrazini!! YAYY

It has been primarily pasta, spaghetti and other casseroles for the last couple of weeks. So tired of everything lumped together I grilled marinated grouper and shrimp in a marinade of grapefruit, orange and lemon juices with garlic, hot sauce, cilantro, etc.

I have a new favorite - Amish Macaroni Salad - OMG - I can eat buckets of that stuff! Then I sauteed in garlic a bag of mustard greens with chopped tomatoes and tomato sauce. I pulled one of the pans of brown and serve Virginia Light Rolls out of the freezer - baked up great!

Desert will be heated up left over Pumpkin bread pudding. I couldn't find the recipe I wanted so I made up my own. Came out pretty good.

I got a THICK steak out of the freezer for DH to grill. Well...he didn't yesterday. About 5ish I asked him when he was going to get the charcoal going...........
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It's under the broiler in the oven. Stewed potatoes on the stove. Mixed green salad.

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He doesn't usually bail when it comes to grilling meat which we both think is far superior than oven broiled. Dang!

quote:

Originally posted by Charming:
I have a new favorite - Amish Macaroni Salad -

I had never heard of Amish Macaroni Salad, so I googled it and found a recipe on Food.com. It's exactly -- and I mean EXACTLY -- the way I make my potato and macaroni salad! Only extra things I might add, if available, is cucumber and green pepper.

http://www.food.com/recipe/amish-macaroni-salad-94164

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MyLifeVacation1,

I don't think DH would eat it even if he didn't seem me put in Miracle Whip. It's gotta be Best Foods mayo in our house.

quote:

Originally posted by CA Lori:
I don't think DH would eat it even if he didn't seem me put in Miracle Whip. It's gotta be Best Foods mayo in our house.

Totally with your DH on this one - it's Best Foods Mayonaise all the way here - Miracle Whip? Say, it's not so!

We usually have some really good dishes but it takes several days to finish them since there are only two of us, so DH suggested a great idea last Friday ~ Sauerkraut and Hotdogs! I jumped at the idea! Steinfeld's jarred kraut and 100% beef franks - I am, after all, the daughter of a cattle rancher!

What could be easier? A few homemade biscuits and hot freshly-baked peanut butter cookies served with vanilla ice cream sealed the deal - and no, I didn't make the ice cream myself ~ but since dessert is rarely on the menu here, the entire dinner was a success!

I had never bought a jar of Miracle Whip until a few years ago. DS started using it in her potato salad dressing along with regular mayo. The extra flavor perked it up.

When I made the Amish Salad I used half and half mayo and miracle whip. Also I hit it with some Saracha sauce and used Sweet Salad Cubes instead of the Dill. I'm guessing that with the name it is supposed to have the sweet, salty, sour, savory, etc. but I prefer the sweet cubes.

Creamy Corn & Potato Chowder tonight.

We're going to Watch party potluck -- my contributions -- dilly pasta salad (pasta, peas, celery, onion with a dilly ranch type dressing) and an easy 8 inch chocolate cake.

Martha

Since I'm leaving tomorrow for a retreat and will be gone until Monday, I cooked a meal tonight. We had grilled chicken breasts, steamed broccoli and wonderful brown rice.

Leftover steak
Purple hull peas out of the freezer
Stewed potatoes
Salad

A week or so ago, one of my sons was here on a Sunday and he and I made baby back ribs using the recipe that is supposed to imitate Tony Roma's Restaurant ribs. We had so much fun, and they were pretty tasty.

Mostly at this time of year I do soups and stews.

Took the easy way out tonight..Papa Murphy's Pizza. Last night was our GOOD meal..meatloaf, mashed potatos, green beans and angel food/blueberry/cream cheese cool whip cake for dessert. The night before that was chicken and noodles..those were YUMMY!

I had company for lunch --

first course --

butternut squash soup with creme fraiche and a bit of crumbled bacon on top.

Martha

Main course -- roasted apple, pecan and feta cheese salad and a crab quiche

dessert was Ina Garten's chocolate ganache cake.

Martha

Linderhof - Yum - it all looks good.

Chilly here today, so I made Giada's white bean soup, plus we'll have a green salad.

For some reason, I haven't wanted to cook lately, so we've been eating lots of salads. I found a new sliced turkey product at Costco that doesn't have any preservatives or additives. It's easy to use on sandwiches or salads. I also bought a box of roasted red pepper soup at Trader Joe's so we can heat up a cup of that to go with our salad or sandwich.

Linderhof, I paged through Ina's new cookbook when I was in Williams-Sonoma yesterday. I get so many of her recipes from foodnetwork.com that I didn't see any new recipes that would make it cost effective for me to buy the book. Maybe I'll put it on my Christmas wish list, though...LOL.

Dang Martha! All of that looks good. I'm not even hungry and I'm salivating!!

We were off visiting for the weekend and went out for steaks. Six of us in the group. One filet was way overcooked to suit friend. I had to sent mine back TWICE to get it cooked enough (ordered medium...got rare). (Oh, and two different kinds of steaks so we didn't swap...besides his was too rare for me even overcooked for him.)

Frustrating. But when the kitchen finally got it right...it was delicious!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: KeepYouInStitches,

I made beef tenderloin last night -- we had French dip sandwiches tonight.

Martha

DH and I made a trip to the fresh meat market Monday. I made homemade chili tonight...enough to freeze a couple of containers and even saved another container to make some chili mac for later this week. Delicious!