"Healthified" Thai Shrimp and Quinoa Curry

Laura
Mmmmmm quinoa. Where has this healthy, little seed been all my life? The quinoa was the star of this Healthified Thai Shrimp and Quinoa Curry dish. The shrimp was good but I wanted it to be a bit spicier. In my opinion, the coconut milk made the shrimp too mellow. I'd be interested in making more Thai dishes but I don't know that I'd make these shrimps again. I will say, that the dish was very filling. I'm attributing that to the quinoa. Over all, I was neither impressed nor repelled by the dish. It was just... eh.

Meredith

I tend to agree with Laura on this dish. The quinoa was delicious. I’d never made or had it before. Very very filling dish, but just lacked any flavor. More spices or a marinade on the shrimp would have definitely gone a long way. I’d make something similar again, but I wouldn’t bother with this as the recipe is written.

Asian Pork Roast

Meredith
Ohhh Asian Pork Roast! Where did you go wrong? Could it have been the instructions to brown the meat after I just rubbed raw garlic on you? Could it have been the use of cloves? Whatever happened, I wasn’t a fan. Most of my roast was dry - I suppose I overcooked it. The onions sweetened to the point of tasting like apples. The whole thing was just not very good. I ate the leftovers throughout the week, but omitted the onions and went light on any sauce. There have got to be better recipes for Asian pork than this. Recipe was was Taste of Home and can be found here.

Laura
Asian Pork Roast sounds delicious, right? Okay, maybe it was a little weird that it smelled like pumpkin pie while it was cooking. I’m assuming that was the ginger and cloves that made it smell that way. Fine, it tasted like someone accidentally seasoned the pork with pumpkin pie spice. There. I said it. Not my favorite dish. Also, mine didn’t cut as pretty as the picture did. My pork shredded. So, what I wound up with was shredded pumpkin pie pork over peas and rice. And those are onions on the top of the pork. They had a weird texture, too. I'm not making this again. I should have allowed the last reviewer of the recipe to be a warning. Lesson learned.

Tuna Casserole

Laura

Let me tell you how this tuna casserole blog came to be...

I was cleaning out my pantry. I had some things that I'm sure I got because they were on sale and I never managed to use them. For example, cream of celery soup. I don’t even LIKE celery. Add that to the cans of tuna and the 1 1/2 bags of egg noodles that I had and I had myself a tuna casserole. 

I’ve never made tuna casserole. I had one experience eating it as a kid and I didn’t like it. It seems comforting though, like mac and cheese is. I mentioned thinking about making it and soon, Meredith was helping me find recipes that we might make.

That being said, I wound up making a hybrid of two recipes. The base of the tuna casserole, I made using this Cheesy Tuna Casserole recipe. Then for the topping, I used this Light and Hearty Tuna Casserole recipe. The only changes I made were to the base recipe: I added the aforementioned cream of celery soup and I accidentally left out the frozen peas.

Would I make it again? Sure. I’d maybe like to find a tasty but healthier recipe to use. I have a whole year to find out. I figure that's the next time I’ll be cleaning out my pantry...

Meredith
I grew up eating tuna casserole maybe weekly. I love the stuff. But it wasn’t until I was in my first apartment and asked my mother how to make it, did I find out that she HATED tuna casserole. My mom recently told me that she hasn’t made tuna casserole since I left home. My poor dad.



I loosely followed this recipe from Food.People.Want. with modifications, of course. I started by sauteing crimini mushrooms with garlic, onions, the celery and green (instead of red) peppers. To that I added the cream of celery soup, milk, mayonnaise, some cheese and the tuna. Finally I folded in cooked egg noodles and poured the mixture into my casserole dish. I used the same topping Laura did: panko breadcrumbs, butter, paprika and Italian seasoning – over top of more cheese though. This was a really good bowl of food and it just got better as the week went on. Next time I’ll have my dad over and I’ll try and remember the peas!

Steak San Marco . . . Polo!

Laura
Where has Steak San Marco been all my life? Super easy and really delicious. I’m definitely making this again.  It felt comforting and rustic. I put it over rice but next time, I’d put it over pasta. (Note to Meredith: Egg noodles are not to be considered pasta.)

I didn’t change a single thing since the recipe was so easy and straight-forward.  This is the perfect way to make something delicious using items that you probably already have in your pantry.

Meredith
One of my favorite dishes that my grandmother makes is Steak San Marco. One day I said to her how much I would LOVE her recipe. She was beyond excited to give it to me. So she went to her desk and hand wrote it on a little piece of stationery that I tucked it away in a binder when I got home. When I was finally ready to make the dish, I Googled “Steak San Marco” to see if it was an actual thing or just something my grandmother had given a name to. Well wouldn’t you know it – her handwritten recipe was COPIED WORD FOR WORD from cooks.com!!! So much for being a family dish! Oh well, it’s super delicious and almost guiltily easy to make.

STEAK SAN MARCO

• 2 lb. chuck meat in cubes
• 1 env. onion soup mix
• 1 can (1 lb.) Italian tomatoes
• 1 tsp. oregano
• Ground pepper
• Garlic powder
• 2 tbsp. cooking oil
• 2 tbsp. wine vinegar

In a large saucepan arrange meat. Cover with dry soup and mix. Add tomatoes, sprinkle with oregano, garlic powder, pepper, oil and vinegar. Simmer 2 1/2 hours. Serve over rice.

Enchiladas Especiales Tacuba Style

Meredith
Working our way down our “bucket list” of Sunday dinners, we reach enchiladas – on precisely the same week that Laura decides she wants to cook something “more involved.” And so here we have Rick Bayless’ Enchiladas Especiales. These chicken enchiladas are covered in a cream sauce that’s a vibrant green from roasted poblanos and fresh spinach. While there were quite a few steps, none of them seemed difficult. I like spending time in the kitchen anyway. The result was one amazing dinner. The enchiladas were rich and cheesy and chickeny – As good as I could get in any Mexican restaurant.

Laura
Let me just say that this is the best dish of food I've eaten in a while!  I don't think that I'll ever be able to eat enchiladas in a restaurant after this.  They were DE-LI-CIOUS!  The poblano peppers gave the green sauce just a little bit of kick in the background.  And there's spinach!  While the enchiladas were "involved" as far as steps went, it wasn't like we had to do some weird cooking method or anything.  They were easy and straight-forward.

So, if you're looking to wow your guests with a dish that tastes like you spent all afternoon in the kitchen, make this dish.  The best part is that you can make the enchiladas ahead of time, clean up your dishes (you'll have a few), then throw them in the oven as your guests arrive.  Your kitchen will be clean and you'll be relaxing knowing that deliciousness awaits.

Stuffed Pork Chops

It was one of those weeks where we started with an idea and went off in search of our own recipes.

Meredith
I tackled Emeril Lagasse’s Homemade Andouille-Stuffed, Bacon-Wrapped Double-Cut Pork Chops with Awesome Ham Hock Gravy. Four kinds of pig on one plate? Yep- I went there! Firstly, I did NOT make my own andouille sausage. Other than that, I think I followed the recipe to a T. A couple of things: the stuffing to me was lacking in flavor. The andouille seemed wasted and superfluous; the cornbread stayed grainy; it just wasn’t very interesting. Next, the amount of bacon I was supposed to wrap these chops in? WOW. My saute pan was a pool of bacon fat and I had to pour most of it out before I went into the oven. About half the bacon would have been plenty rich. BUT the star of the show - The Ham Hock Gravy - OH MAN was that ever a winner! Absolutely delicious. I probably won’t bother with much else of this recipe again, but I’ll need to find places to put this gravy in the future.

Laura
Well, the recipe I used was supposed to be an easier version of the one Meredith used, but honestly, whoever wrote it neglected to reread it.  (Yeah, this is the part where Meredith tells me that if I read the recipe more than once, I might have noticed it.)  Moving right along . . .

The pork chops were really good.  They were actually better the second time around.  I find that happens a lot.  I always seem to enjoy food the next day so much more.  My only issue was that there was way too much bacon on the pork chops.  I'm not convinced if the bacon was used to flavor or to hide the messy stuffing job.  Look, I'm the only person on the planet that thinks that while bacon does have it's place in my life (BLTs, with eggs, maybe even on the occasional burger), I don't think it needs to be EVERYWHERE.  This might be one of those times.  I feel like everywhere I look, a baconista (just watch that word catch on) is putting bacon in cupcakes or some other similarly inappropriate place.  Wait, I was talking about pork chops, wasn't I?

The end result was very good.  I enjoyed the pork chop.  I'm glad we made them but I'm still not over the bacon!

South Beach Diet Extravaganza!!

This was an entire day of cooking. We made egg muffins to have for breakfast through the week and then  dinner and dessert for that night.

Egg Muffins My recipe goes something like this:

12 eggs, beaten

4 oz low fat cheese, grated (I used pepper jack)
4 oz turkey sausage, browned
1 red/green pepper
1/2 onion

Brown, turkey with pepper and onion. Season with salt and pepper. Line muffin tins with cupcake liners and spray VERY WELL with non-stick spray. Spoon sausage and veg mixture evenly throughout muffin tins. Top each with cheese. Pour eggs over top and bake at 350 for 30 minutes-ish or until eggs are set.

Spinach Souffle Stuffed Chicken
This is one of my tried and true South Beach Diet Cookbook recipes. It awesome every time. It’s something I’d consider eating everyday. It’s best served with mashed cauliflower and the sauce that the recipe instructs. Decadent even.

Mocha Creme Somethings
This is my second attempt at a South Beach Cookbook dessert. BLEH BLEH BLEH. Nothing I’ve ever made is any good. I will stick to my fudgsicles.

Laura
Here's the recipe I used for my Egg Muffins:
Kalyn's Kitchen Egg Muffins 
(Note: I've used this website a couple of times now.  There are a lot of healthy and delicious recipes on there.  Definitely check out some of the other recipes on there, too.)  So, the muffins are great.  This obviously can be changed based on the vegetables, cheeses and meats that you have on hand.

The chicken recipe I used was the same exact one that Meredith used.  South Beach has never tasted so good!  I'm not sure if I did something wrong, but it was kind of a messy prep.  Well worth it, though.  The spinach souffle was surprisingly very flavorful.  I'd definitely make this again.  The best part was, when I brought it into work the next day, my friend commented on how delicious it looked.  She couldn't believe that it was made with a frozen food product.

 And finally for that disastrous dessert.  Obviously, something went very, very wrong because my eggs tasted scrambled instead of custard-like.  I won't make that ever again!  Lesson learned!