Admittedly I was skeptical about trying this recipe, but it sounded so, so good. We picked up some smoked salmon for a steal from the discount meat bin at Woodman’s and I found the recipe when I was searching for ways to work smoked salmon in with pasta.

My shortcut? Vodka sauce from a little fresh Italian place nearby that sells fresh homemade sauces. I simply crumbled up the smoked salmon and sautéed it with olive oil and garlic before mixing it in with the vodka sauce. I served it over bucatini (thick, hollow spaghetti)  and the flavor was shocking.

I’d never have imagined the smoked salmon and vodka sauce could possibly complement each other so well. The sweetness and saltiness played off each other to create such a complex, evolving flavor. It was absolutely sensational. I might try it with a jarred vodka sauce next time.

CONFESSION: My secret to my chili isn’t shortcut at all. In fact, it’s a gigantic pain, but it makes it so much better. I grind my own very lean meat.

From there it’s hard to say. My chili’s never really the same twice, though I follow the same steps. Brown the meat with plenty of onions and garlic and lots of Penzey’s chili powder, some cumin and chipotle pepper, and plenty of canned tomatoes. Add diced poblano peppers for spice and simmer on very low heat for several hours. I serve it with diced white onion, sour cream and shredded cheese and have been told more than once it’s the best around. I don’t know about that, but it’s good stuff.

But seriously, if you have the means, grind your own meat. We grind chicken, turkey and beef with our KitchenAid Food Grinder Attachment, and it really makes all the difference.

CONFESSION: To say my husband’s a little timid about cooking is an understatement. Still, occasionally he’s willing to tackle dinner, as long as he has VERY SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS. This is the email I sent him to make this delicious beef stew. You really can’t go wrong with this recipe, just season to taste (I season generously with garlic salt, pepper and random herbs).

1. Clean carrots (peel if you want, it’s not necessary if they’re clean), cut into large chunks. All of them (yummm, carrots)
2. Clean potatoes, cut into large chunks (quarters). About half as many potatoes as carrots is a good margin (yummm, carrots)
3. Cut mushrooms in half if button, chunks if portobella
4. Peel and cut two red onions in quarters
5. Mince one full clove of elephant garlic (you can cut it in pieces and run it through the garlic press)
6. Use the Penzey’s beef roast seasoning. Read the directions and add 2x  the recommended amount of spice.
7. Up to you if you want to chop the meat into cubes. It can go in as one big slab and will break apart well enough.
8. Place potatoes and carrots and half of onions and garlic at bottom of crock pot with a sprinkling of the spices.
9. Add beef
10. Add the rest of the beef broth in the carton in the fridge (1 cup) and 1 can cream of mushroom soup and 1 can cream of celery
    
11. Add seasoning
12. Add mushrooms and second half of onions and garlic.
13. Heat on low ‘til I come home.

About 8 hours later we had awesome stew!! Because of the cream soups, this version isn’t a very rich gravy but it’s tasty and  full of flavor. Super easy!

Since I started teaching in August, my 10-hour days plus my teaching schedule have made dinners at home generally boring and certainly nothing worth posting. Lots of repeats of previous favorite meals, that sort of thing. But I’ve decided to begin harnessing what time I *do* have to begin cooking meals ahead of time. As a result, my Hamilton Beach Programmable Slow-Cooker has been getting quite the workout!!

This recipe was a gamble, and an exercise in clearing out a bottle of honey mustard from the fridge that was not really my favorite — too honey, not enough mustard. This was mostly eyeballed but it’s worth recording. The end result was unbelievable.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of honey mustard
• 1 tsp ground sage
• Fresh ground pepper (to taste)
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1 cup low-sodium beef broth (as usual, I swear by Kitchen Basics)
• 2 tbsp tarragon vinegar (my husband’s uncle’s homemade stuff… to die for! It’s easy to find Tarragon vinegar in the store, too)
• 2 onions, chopped
• 1 1.5lb pork tenderloin

Cook honey mustard, vinegar, garlic and sage in a saucepan ’til warm and combined. Toss onions in bottom of your slow cooker, and put thawed tenderloin on top. Add beef broth. Pour sauce over tenderloin. Cook for 6-8 hours on high or 3-4 hours on low.

Okay, here’s the caveat. If you have a newer model Rival Crock Pot, there’s no way you can cook this for 6-8 hours. They have redefined “high” and “low” and, well, it’s just sad. If you have one of these, Goodwill is always happy to receive your crock pot. Then you can get the Hamilton Beach Programmable Slow-Cooker, which ACTUALLY cooks things slowly (what a concept, right?!).

When it’s done, shred the meat with a fork and combine the  meat with the sauce and onions. Great for sandwiches or served with Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

When I discovered Trader Joe’s had langostino tails (little, sweet lobsters) for only $9 a bag I about lost my mind. There’s little I love more than seafood alfredo, and now I would be able to make my own!!

It was really quite simple to do. I thawed and rinsed the langostinos before sautéeing them in olive oil with a generous amount of finely chopped garlic until they were cooked through. To the olive oil, garlic and langostinos I added a jar of Five Brothers Garlic Alfredo Sauce, a bottle of which is always, always in my pantry. I let this simmer just long enough to combine the flavors. This time I added some Trader Joe’s Roasted Corn for some sweetness.

It’s easily one of my favorite meals and tastes like $20-a-plate pasta. Absolutely sensational. I’ll be looking for more exciting ways to cook langostinos in the future. YUMMMMM.

Tonight’s dinner was the product of a fridge full of mustgo. A pound of ground beef, some multicolored cauliflower from the farmer’s market and some leftover curry paste. I’d never thought about making curried ground beef, so I was shocked when I found that ground meat actually had a name.

I kind of wished I could have cooked the cauliflower in a dish that showed off it’s awesome coloring, but I let it go too long and it needed to be cooked now. That said, it was delicious!

As usual with my Indian/Pakistani dishes, I served it up with Trader Joe’s Garlic Naan.

Who knew a crappy little hole-in-the-wall restaurant would have one of the best meals out I’ve had in a long time? My friends and I had dinner at Taste of Lebanon in Chicago before seeing our friend Don play Tom Cruise in a reenactment of Legend at the Neo-Futurists Theatre and were treated to a dirt cheap meal with so much flavor that it had me craving more for the better part of a week.

My falafel (made with  Near East brand falafel mix), really, can hardly hold a candle to theirs, but it was mighty tasty. I actually prefer Casbah brand for flavor and texture.

It was also my first time making Maftoul, middle eastern couscous. It’s an interesting grain that was really delicious. To the broth I cooked it in I added the remaining water from the roasted red peppers, which added a great sweetness to the dish that reminded me of the couscous from my favorite lunch place when I worked in downtown Chicago, Roti. I wish I’d had some mandarin oranges to add to the side dish like they do there, but the carrots and roasted corn were great too. I look forward to making a cold salad like Roti’s with the Maftoul for my next potluck.

This meal had a couple different inspirations. A few years ago my husband and I went to Cleveland for a long weekend and ate at a wonderful little restaurant whose name I can no longer recall. I’ll never forget my lunch, though; they served a macaroni and cheese with pulled BBQ pork that was just out of this world. They were flavors I’d never considered mingling before, but I’m telling you it’s like magic.

The second inspiration was the now-dead Nola’s Cup in Oak Park, IL. I’m sad to say I wasn’t a fan at all of the food at Nola’s. I like my cajun super spicy and flavorful and this just seemed bland. Their BBQ pork ravioli appetizer, served with a gouda cream sauce, however, was delicious.

I used a basic cream sauce recipe for this… a pint of chicken broth, a pint of whipping cream, garlic, butter and shredded gouda cheese in the place where you usually find parmesan, thickened up with a bit of  cornstarch. I then tossed it in a baking dish with some garlic herb breadcrumbs and tossed it under the broiler to help sop up some of the liquid.

On the top of each plate I served a dollop of Trader Joe’s Pulled Pork. Not bad, but I strongly prefer Lloyd’s Pulled Pork (in a tub). I had to add a ton of Sweet Baby Ray’s to get this barbecuey enough for my taste.

Mix it all up and what I thought would be plenty with leftovers was devoured entirely by us and our guests. A fantastic success, I think!

Inspiration hit tonight and boy was it a good one. I present to you a new favorite. The flavor was complex and intense, sharp and sweet. It was kind of the perfect meal, and if I had a restaurant this would so be on the menu.

Since I don’t have a restaurant, I present to you my recipe.

Red Pepper Pesto

• 1 jarred roasted red pepper (I got the jar with two whole peppers for 99¢ on sale and am now kind of sad I only bought two jars!)
• 6 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in 1/4 cup olive oil until soft
• 1 tbsp pine nuts
• Handful of fresh basil
• 1 large clove garlic
• Salt & Pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a food processor until puréed. Cook on low for about 15-20 minutes in a saucepan until some of the moisture is cooked away. Toss with pasta and goat cheese. This was outstanding with some previously frozen cheese ravioli.

This was one of the tastiest things I’ve made in a really long time. I can’t remember where I found the picture I saw online that inspired me to create this, but the recipe is my own and completely improvised, so hopefully my measurements are about right.

CONFESSION: I am hugely skeptical about tofu that claims to be something else. Unless it’s made by Quorn. Then it’s cool.

That said, it’s not a surprise I’m not terribly impressed with Smart Strips Chick’n Strips. They simply tried to make them too much like chicken, which is awesome in its own way, I guess, but I kind of wanted a tofu product. However, I will continue to sing the praises of one of my favorite things, the House Tofu Cutlet.

This stir fry is loaded up with onion, sugar snap peas, orange pepper, yellow squash, bamboo shoots, oyster mushrooms and pea shoots, one of my new favorite vegetable finds thanks dinner with some Chinese friends who knew just what to order in Chinatown.

For the sauce I just used the leftover JES Korean BBQ Sauce from last week’s Boolgogi and served it over brown rice.

Chicken piccata is something I’ve never tried to make before. I used to love Lean Cuisine’s Chicken Piccata back when they had it (I think it might be spookily similar to the Lemon Chicken now)  so when I saw that Trader Joes carried a jarred chicken piccata sauce, I was ecstatic to try it. The results…

Meh?

It’s not BAD, and part of it was my fault for pairing it with the absolute WRONG vegetables; I should have waited until I had some root veggies for roasting with this. But the sauce, unlike all the other Trader Joes pepared sauces i’ve tried, tastes like it comes from a jar. I even sauteed my own onions to give it some more body, but it just kind of fell flat. Again, it was yummy and all, but meh?

Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

I’m not afraid to mix my Asian cuisines. Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai—if it comes from Mitsuwa it all overlaps in my kitchen. Trader Joes also has pre-marinated Korean Boolgogi (or Bulgogi), but I prefer the stuff from our favorite Asian grocer.

Again using the peppers and onions from the taco party, I stir fried the marinated beef. I also added broccoli and half a jar of JES Korean BBQ Sauce, because I like my stir fries saucy.

As a munchie to go with it I steamed some frozen edamame shumai.

We served this over brown rice and I ate it with my new favorite chopsticks. They’re lime green and sparkly and make me unreasonably happy.