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Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Sauce

Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Cream sauce

Date: December 28th, 2012

Recipe: http://www.annies-eats.com/2012/12/05/shrimp-enchiladas-with-roasted-poblano-sauce/

Tortillas: http://www.annies-eats.com/2011/11/01/diy-flour-tortillas/

Modifications: I only used one adobo pepper in the sauce because I didn’t want it as spicy for the toddlers.

Time to table: 45 minutes

Servings: 7 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Like

Notes: Ben and I were both home last week while the kids were in daycare, so we each spent part of a day making a more elaborate meal than normal. His was the cassoulet, and this was mine! I wanted to try my hand at making tortillas, and then I also made a dessert that was part of Ben’s Christmas present from me, so I was pretty much in the kitchen the entire day. I am my own worst critic after I’ve spent so long on a meal – I did REALLY like these, but they weren’t quite as saucy as I prefer enchiladas (perhaps because they sat out with the sauce on before baking for awhile) and because my tortillas weren’t very uniform they were kind of ugly too. The tortillas were actually pretty easy, but I do not have (nor do I want) a discerning enough palate to appreciate the flavor of homemade tortillas vs store bought. I will gladly pay $3 to not spend an hour making dough, individually weighing dough pieces, rolling out and frying each one. Fun to do once, definitely, but the taste wasn’t much better to me than the ones we buy. I LOVED the filling of these – shredded cabbage, carrots, and spinach with shrimp sounds super odd but it was a great mix and with the creamy sauce was awesome. I’m not typically a huge shrimp fan, but it worked well in these. We’ll definitely have these again! (except try to cut some steps since this did take FOR-EV-ER – not a weeknight meal, for sure). I think you could prep the veggies for the filling in advance, roast the poblanos and chop in advance, and then it’d come together quick enough to be made on a weeknight.

Lots of photos of this process…

Flour Tortillas
Dough for tortillas

Flour Tortillas
Rolled out as thin as I could make it

Flour Tortillas

Flour Tortillas
Finished tortillas

Roasted Poblano Peppers
Roasted poblanos

Shrimp enchilada filling
The filling

Roasted Poblano Cream sauce
Roasted poblano cream sauce

Shrimp Enchiladas with Roasted Poblano Cream sauce

Twix Trifles
Dessert – kind of meh because neither pudding tasted like I felt like it should (aka, like the stuff from a box) but I call it a win because I successfully made caramel, and hey – can’t go wrong with this much sugar and cream and chopped twix no matter what!

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Date: December 26th, 2012

Quinoa cakes recipe: http://www.annies-eats.com/2011/12/05/quinoa-cakes-with-poached-eggs/

Poached eggs recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2008/08/how-to-poach-an-egg-smitten-kitchen-style/

Modifications:  None

Time to table: 45 minutes

Servings: 4 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Love

Notes: These cakes were totally awesome. I made the first two a little too big, so Erin made the last 4 smaller, which worked out well for Annie. The poached egg instructions from smitten kitchen are linked to in the original recipe post, but I wanted to call it out here, as it delivered the absolute best poached eggs I’ve ever made. I can’t wait to have these for lunch today, in about 10 minutes :)

Quinoa Cakes with Poached Eggs

Looks like frosting
Annie with her "dinner cake"

Cake for dinner?!?

“Witches Brew” Cheesy Spinach Soup and Monster Sandwiches

Monster Sandwich and Witches Brew soup

 

Date: October 31, 2012

Recipes: http://www.annies-eats.com/2012/10/10/open-monster-face-sandwiches/ - Sandwiches

http://www.annies-eats.com/2012/10/04/witches-brew-cheesy-spinach-soup/ - Soup

Modifications: Pretty much just followed the recipe – I think we used one more potato than the recipe called for in the soup.

Time to table: 20 mins prep, 15 minutes simmering

Servings: 4 adults (for the soup)

Ben: Dislike – he wasn’t feeling the very very strong gruyere tonight, and he was a spoilsport and just made a “normal” sandwich ;)

Erin: Like

Annie: Like – definitely enjoyed making the sandwich!

Notes: Seemed like an appropriate, healthy and quick meal for Halloween before trick-or-treating! These open faced sandwiches are really fun for kids to make. It didn’t make Annie want to eat the veggies any more than normal – she just wanted the cheese and meat. She does really seem to like broccoli, so she ate that but she still isn’t a fan of peppers! The soup came together really quickly, and although the gruyere we got seemed a bit more pungent than normal, I still enjoyed it and so did Annie. Ben finished his but wasn’t a fan of the flavor of the cheese.

Monster sandwich

"witches brew" cheesy spinach soup

Making Monster Sandwiches

Spinach Artichoke Pasta

Spinach Artichoke Pasta

Date: October 22, 2012

Recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/10/spinach-artichoke-pasta/

Modifications: I halved the recipe to fit in an 8×8 pan, and then did bake it for a bit because I wanted to.

Time to table: 20 mins prep, 20 mins baking time

Servings: 6 adults (so the original recipe is HUGE)

Ben: Like

Erin: Love

Annie: Like (the noodles at least – she gagged on a bite of the plain spinach and artichokes after holding it in her mouth for a long time)

Notes: I am a big fan of spinach artichoke dip, so I knew I’d love this dish. It’s actually pretty easy so it made a good weeknight meal. I think I’d like the cream cheese in there but it might push it over the edge into the uncomfortably rich category that Pioneer Woman recipes sometimes are…

Spinach Artichoke Pasta

Annie's faces

Egg Muffins

Egg, bacon toast muffins

Date: September 25, 2012

Recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/330179/bacon-egg-and-toast-cups

Modifications:  I chopped the bacon up, rather than use whole strips, we also threw in some slightly sauteed spinach to add some veggies. Also, not wanting to waste pieces of bread, I used a half slice of bread in each muffin tin, rather than cutting a circle out of 6 pieces.

Time to table: 20 minutes prep, 20 minutes cook time

Servings: 6 eggs worth

Ben: Like

Erin: Like

Annie: Dislike

Notes: This was a great way to use up some eggs and bacon that we had leftover from other recipes. I was surprised how little spinach and bacon fit inside the muffin tin, so I chopped up a bit too much spinach. Annie flipped out over this meal because she didn’t want the eggs touching anything else. Ah, the rough life of a toddler :)
Happy before she discovered this was not a "real" cupcake :)

Corn Cakes with Tomato Avocado Relish

Corn cakes with tomato avocado relish

Date: July 30th, 2012

Recipe: http://annies-eats.com/2011/08/25/corn-cakes-with-tomato-avocado-relish/

Modifications:  Didn’t have white wine vinegar, so used red wine vinegar instead for the relish. Just now realized that I forgot the scallion in the relish. Didn’t notice.

Time to table: 30 minutes

Servings: Hmm, there were far too many corn cakes for the 3 of us, but only just enough relish. Ben had the leftover cakes with salsa and sour cream. To serve 4-5 adults, I’d double the relish recipe.

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Like (She seemed okay with the corn cake, and ate a bit of the avocado and spinach)

Notes:  We all really liked this far more than expected! A great summer meal for hot days.

Milk!

Greek Veggie Wrap

Finished product

Date: 7/4/2012

Recipe: http://annies-eats.com/2012/06/06/lets-do-lunch-greek-veggie-wraps/

Modifications: I used store bought hummus, and balsamic vinaigrette instead of making my own.

Time to table: 10 minutes prep the night before, 5 minutes to prep the wrap that day.

Servings: I just made one wrap, but with the ingredients you can modify it to serve as many as you want.

Erin: Love

Notes: Well, as you may have noticed, we haven’t been cooking much lately! We have been making some tried and true favorites, and using some of our freezer meals when the temps are below 90. Lunches are hard for me – if we have leftovers, that’s great, and I sometimes bring in all the fixings for sandwiches and make those for a week or so, but all too often I revert to buying lunch, especially at one of the many new food trucks downtown Minneapolis has to offer. I need to be better about bringing my lunch at least a few days a week for financial reasons, so recipes like this that actually have me EXCITED to eat lunch at my desk are great! This was delicious, and surprisingly very filling – it would be a great hot weather dinner as well.

Lunch components

Inside the wrap

Sweet Potato Foil Packet Tacos

Sweet Potato Foil Packets

Date: 5/8/2012

Recipe: http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/main-courses/sweet-potato-foil-packet-tacos/

Modifications: I used ground turkey, black beans, and did not peel the sweet potatoes. I didn’t have tomato sauce, so I just used some crushed tomatoes instead. We use this taco seasoning recipe.

Time to table: 30 minutes, plus 30 minutes of baking time

Servings: 6 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Like

Notes: My friend Chelsea sent me this recipe, and I immediately knew it would be a winner in our house! The best part about these is that you really can prep everything completely beforehand, and then just pop the foil packets in the oven when you’re ready to eat. Ben has an oven at work and was able to bring the extra packets to work the next few days. It is important to layer the packets with the sweet potatoes on the bottom, if they are on top they won’t get cooked through. We served with tortillas and sour cream.

Sweet Potato Foil Packets

Sausage and Spinach Stuffed Shells

IMG_7331

Date: 4/26/2012

Recipe: http://annies-eats.com/2009/02/27/sausage-and-spinach-stuffed-shells/

Modifications: I got diced tomatoes for the “chopped tomatoes” called for in the recipe – I’m not sure if there is a different thing actually called chopped tomatoes, but if there is, I couldn’t find it. I only made 2 8×8 pans, and for my preference, there wasn’t NEARLY enough sauce. I added a large can of crushed tomatoes to the top – a 28oz can split pretty evenly between both pans.

Time to table: 1 hour prep, ~1 hour baking time

Servings: Three 8×8 pans (but I got only 2 + some extra)

Ben: Love

Erin: Love

Annie: Like

Notes: This made a little more than 2 8×8 pans for me – but the remaining weren’t quite enough for another pan. I used my small pampered chef cookie scoop to stuff  the shells – about 2 scoops per shell. I froze the 2nd 8×8 pan prior to the baking step. This is very similar to the other stuffed shells recipe we tried, but I liked this one better, especially since I knew to add a lot more sauce. The filling was especially rich and delicious, probably due to using sausage versus turkey.

IMG_7330

IMG_7325

Chicken chili verde

Crockpot Chicken Chili Verde

Date: 2/6/2012

Recipe: http://weelicious.com/2011/10/04/crock-pot-chicken-chili-verde/

Modifications: We basically turned this into a chili and didn’t serve it over rice. We added chopped spinach and white beans at the end. For the chicken we used a 1.6 lb package of boneless, skinless thighs. I upped the garlic from one clove to six.

Time to table: 15 minutes prep, 4 hours cook time

Servings: 4 adults

Ben: Love

Erin: Like

Annie: Like

Notes: I thought to add the spinach later on in this recipe, then as Erin was looking at it, she remarked that it was odd that it didn’t have any beans in it. Knowing that we had a can of beans in the cupboard, I threw those in too, forgetting it was supposed to be served over rice, so it became more of a chili, but I thought these were great modifications. The only liquid in the dish is from the salsa verde. We topped our with cheese and sour cream and had the remaining beer bread along with it as well. We’ll definitely make this again and I think I’ll add more spinach or another vegetable. This ended up being similar to the white chicken chili we’ve made before, not sure which one I like better.

Crockpot Chicken Chili Verde