Okay, so our friends had this party that involved a taco bar. And they overprepared. Like OMG overprepared. Like after TWO dinner parties that weekend they still sent guests home with bags of chopped onion, tomatoes, peppers and cheese. My cooking usually features a lot of peppers and onions, but these formed the base of pretty much every meal this week, including the Murg Rogan Josh. In a way, though, it’s cool, and just shows how versatile a couple ingredients can be.

So anyway, my confession of the day. CONFESSION: I am terrified of veal. I feel like a bad person when I eat it, but it’s SOOOOOO delicious. Usually  the fact that it’s prohibitively expensive keeps me safe from delicious baby cows, but when it’s in the discount meat bin at Woodman’s, well…

My husband helped a lot with this meal. He took the ground veal, which I mix with Progresso Garlic & Herb Bread Crumbs (a necessary staple I always have on hand) and grated Parmesan cheese from our Italian deli. Again, spend the coin and get fresh grated cheese that needs to be refrigerated. Just say no to green-can parmesan!

My recipe for this, like a lot of my Italian food, is eyeballed, but here’s what I do.

I use about 1/4 cup of crumbs,  1/8 cup of parm, 1 egg and a healthy helping of dried Italian herbs for 1 lb of ground veal. Mash it up and form really thin hamburgers.

I use a 2-1 mixture of  crumbs to parm for breading my veal. Dredge these in egg wash and then coat in the breadcrumbs before putting in a pan with a bit of hot olive oil.

I served this over Wacky Mac that I made for lunches for the week in case I didn’t cook again (ha!). The sauce is onions, peppers, garlic and fresh chopped tomaotes (the leftovers from the taco party) sautéed in olive oil in a separate pan before being added to a basic jarred spaghetti sauce.

So, so, so good, and worth feeling a little guilty over the veal.

Trader Joes, how do I love thee. I don’t care that you’re Aldi in a fancy dress. In fact, I love that you’re Aldi in a fancy dress and your delicious foods are priced accordingly. And I do love thee. Let me count the ways.

First there’s their Garlic Naan, in the freezer section for < $2 a package of  four big pieces. For that I love you lots. Then there’s the Vegetable Biryani, so conveniently packaged and ready to devour…

My favorite part about Trader Joes is that they make it easy and inexpensive to cook gourmet quality ethnic food. If I’m going to cook, I require variety, and what’s not to love about making something like Indian food easier?

I used Patak’s Rogan Josh sauce with chicken, onions and peppers in the goodie bags leftover from our friend’s taco party and piled the rest of it together.  Cheap, quick, and restaurant quality. Thank you, Trader Joes.

My dearest friend Tracy is not a shortcut chef. In fact, were I a superhero, she would be my nemesis. She bakes. From scratch. She makes sauces and breads and even makes her own damn brown sugar. But this is one of the many reasons I love her. Her food is always amazing and nobody but nobody bakes like she does.

So when she told me she wanted to unload some of the curried apple chutney that she made and canned, I jumped at the chance. Then I had to figure out what to do with it. Pork seemed like a good idea, so I paired the curried apple chutney with some pork chops, cauliflower and carrots and baked it all.

The result was interesting, and I mean interesting in the best possible way. The flavors were unexpected and fantastic,  sweet and savory all at once. We’ve still got more chutney for experimenting with, but this was definitely a winner.

The Bandai Futomaki Maker has arrived, and as expected it’s kind of fun, kind of a pain in the ass, and going to feature quite the learning curve, but it was a start. We made the “it’s almost a heart” sushi (the purple in the picture) and figured out how to make it actually a heart, but I only made enough rice for dinner. This will require rice for experimentation.

I did, however, discover the sheer awesomeness that is colored sushi, featuring rice tinted with McCormick Neon Food Coloring. HOLY CRAP IT’S AWESOME. I learned that by putting the colors half & half (I had  a little more green than purple left) you get a sort-of-but-not-really-a-yinyang shape, and that purple and green sushi might be the coolest thing ever.

QUICK TIP: If you’re planning on making a sushi dinner on a work day, make your rice before you leave for work. It’ll be JUST FINE in your rice cooker all day and when you get home you’ll have already cooled rice ready for mixing.

Want my sushi recipe? Check it out here. I shall reserve judgment on the Futomaki maker for when I actually get some time to play with it properly.

My lunch tomorrow is going to be so badass… In reality it’s at least a lunch-and-a-half, but still…

So the Bento Lunch thing hasn’t gotten old yet. Monday’s lunch is in my new little 4-compartment case that I picked up at Mitsuwa for $3.99, and I LOVE this thing. Bento is a super fun way to make a nice light lunch with lots of variety and a surprising amount of food.

Red Compartment: Dried Mangoes, 100-calorie pack of Grasshopper cookies, cranberry nut clusters

Green Compartment: Apricot & Grapes

Gold Compartment: Sugar-free strawberry-banana Jell-O with a sliced strawberry

Purple Compartment: Sharp cheddar cheese cubes, sugar snap peas and cherry tomatoes

I’ll be enjoying this with a Dannon Frusion yogurt “smoothie”.

Rotisserie chicken is probably my husband’s favorite thing that I make. It’s also fun because it always looks terribly impressive to the people at work when I bring in a tasty 1/4 chicken meal for lunch and they ask “Where’d you get that?” They ask even though they know better, that I make my own meals most of the time. Perhaps because they hope one day I’ll say “nah, I ordered in last night.” I do love my leftovers.

The irony is that while it looks mighty impressive, it’s one of the simplest meals I make. Seriously, I Set It And Forget It. That’s right, I have a Showtime Rotisserie. And boy, do I love it so. I only use it about once a month or so because there’s just so much stuff I love to make, but it’s always a hit and it’s seriously easy. I got mine for a steal off Ebay; check Craigslist too.

If you have a rotisserie, I can’t recommend Stretch Silicone Cooking Bands enough. Wrap the chicken, roast, etc., and these babies come off easily AND can be cleaned and reused over and over. They’re easily of the best $6 investments I’ve made for  my kitchen.

I flavored this chicken with Penzey’s Galena Street rub and, quite literally just set it and forgot it. I steamed carrots on the top and served it up with some broccoli cheese rice for a super easy yet very impressive meal.

This morning my husband ad I had very different ideas about what sounded good in our breakfast scrambles, so I decided to make two.

Mine, the one on the left, was featured egg whites, mushrooms, onions, ham and green peppers with Laughing Cow French Onion cream cheese melted in. My husband’s scramble is made with whole eggs, onion, green pepper, broccoli, ham and cheddar.

As usual, I sauté the vegetables separately to get the most flavor and spice the eggs with white pepper and Penzey’s Parisien Herbs. Multigrain toast with some Stover’s Cranberry/Raspberry Jam from the Oak Park Farmer’s Market rounded out my meal; his is spread with McCutcheon’s Pear Butter.

Add some carrot-banana nectar for him and some orange-pineapple juice for me in our new Star Trek glasses from Burger King and it was an awesome breakfast. Nothing terribly exciting, but maybe you’ll get some ideas for your breakfast.

I’ve had my Bento Box for a little over a year, but this is the first bento I’ve really take a lot of time on making adorable. My friend Tracy’s on a bento kick and I decided to join in!

In the bottom tier I’ve got ants-on-a-log (celery with peanut butter & raisins) some cheese crackers with peanut butter and a couple cranberry nut clusters. The top tier has some All-Bran Multi-Grain crackers, Lauging Cow French Onion Cheese, sugar snap peas and baby carrots.

The sandwich container has a turkey and cheddar sandwich cut into an adorable flower and little stars with some assorted vegetables.

My favorite part of my bento kit is the Engrish on the cover. “Putifresh! Happy fruits is very delicious. I will eat this and will become fortunate all together!” ©Lube Sheep. This was actually a lot of fun!! I look forward to playing some more with this, and to see what Tracy comes up with.

One of the keys to keeping at-home cooking interesting is knowing how to put meals together, combining flavors in a variety of ways. Tonight’s dinner was grilled on my Mario Batali Grill Pan. For these great thinly cut pork chops I used Penzey’s Northwoods Fire, a nice smoky and spicy blend. I brushed the chops with a light layer of Sweet Baby Ray’s Hickory & Brown Sugar BBQ Sauce, my absolute favorite sauce.

Pretty much any variety of Sweet Baby Ray’s gets added to my list of favorite things. It’s just incomparable to other sauces, in my opinion. It’s not too runny like some, not too smoky like others. Every type I’ve tried is pure perfection, though my favorite is the Honey Barbecue Sauce.

I paired dinner with some baked curly fries and a mix of green beans and Trader Joe’s Roasted Corn. The smoky sweetness of the corn is the perfect complement to the spicy pork chops. Just writing about it makes me want more!

CONFESSION: Campbell’s taught me how to cook. The first cookbook I ever used regularly was Campbell’s Quick and Easy Cookbook. While my dad has a lot to do with my love of cooking, this was the first cookbook that taught me how to shortcut through recipes and how to begin experimenting with the possibilities of everyday foods.

The Beef & Broccoli recipe was one that I absolutely lived on when I was first living on my own. I make a few changes when I make this, adding some Chinese Five-Spice to punch up the flavor, and I marinate the beef in teriyaki or soy sauce.

When I told my husband that the sauce was made with Campbell’s Tomato Soup he looked at me like I was crazy. Two servings later, he was a believer.

If you’ve been following this site for any time you know my penchant for taking leftovers and turning them into a delicious Crustless Bisquick Quiche (follow the link for the recipe!). This time I used the leftover potatoes from the lamb roast, gyros meat, chopped onion, tomato and crumbled goat cheese.

As always, it turned out fantastic and was an excellent and easy way to use up some leftovers from earlier in the week and stretch them out just a bit further. I cut this up into 6 pieces, giving my husband and me a quick grab-and-go breakfast that lasts ’til midweek.

This Mother’s Day we didn’t get together with family, since we spent the day before at my husband’s college graduation surrounded by both our families. After joining some friends for an absolutely amazing brunch at Over Easy—where I had the smoked salmon omelet and became inspired to host a brunch with friends, for Mother’s Day dinner we decided to make something fancy that we most likely could not make if we happened to have kids, a tongue-in-cheek celebration of our freedom as non-parents.

The rest of my Mother’s Day, what wasn’t spent cuddling with my boys—our cats Pippen, Romeo and my husband—was spent going through and reorganizing my spice rack after another stop at Penzey’s, where we replenished some things and picked up a couple new things to play with.

To prep this, I rubbed the tilapia with some lemon zest and dill weed before sautéeing it with a tiny bit of olive oil. We picked up some locally grown baby broccoli (which might be my new favorite veggie!) and purple asparagus from our local Trader Joe’s, which I steamed in our Black & Decker Handy Steamer. To finish it off I sautéed some leftover penne pasta with butter, a dash of lemon juice, dill and fresh garlic.

Paired with some sangria, this was an unbelievable way to end the weekend!