Dinners for the Week(s)

Two weeks ago we were either out of town or eating cheap (grilled cheese & soup), but we did make recipes for some visiting friends ~

► Pad Thai (pictured below) - I do buy the Taste of Thai sauce, but buy the rice noodles at the Asian store for much cheaper. The sauce is a little pricey too, so I'm hoping to find a good recipe for it too (but cooking for guests is not the time to experiment!). I'd recommend using about 2/3 of the noodles called for so the sauce is not spread so thin. We normally make this with cubed ham (like in the picture) but this time I used shredded rotisserie chicken - good, but a little too monotone.

► Molasses Cookies - Justin's grandmother's recipe! Crispy on the outside, chewy inside, and incredible flavor. We inhaled these. I don't have a recipe link so I'll just paste it below ~

1.5 sticks butter, 1 cups sugar, 1 egg, ¼ cups molasses, 2 cups flour, 2 tsp. baking soda, ¼ tsp. salt, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. ground ginger. Mix dough & chill overnight (or stick in the freezer for a few minutes!). Shape into 1” balls, dip into sugar. Bake 10 min. at 350 F. Makes about 40!




Last week we tried several new recipes ~

► Hashbrown Bites (for breakfasts) - Made these in regular muffin tins filled halfway and they barely crisped at all. Not very impressed, and even eating 3 (1/4 of the batch) left me feeling hungry.

► Ranch Pork chops over mashed potatoes with cabbage & applesauce (2 dinners) - Really good! I don't like the texture that chicken gets in the crock pot so it's hard to find any recipes I like but I think we'll make this one again. We doubled the sauce, as recommended, and ended up with enough mashed potatoes for a third meal (forgot to mix in the Parmesan, no loss).

► Steak, (leftover) mashed potatoes, & roasted kale

► Skinny Chicken Divan (2 dinners) - This was good but I was hoping for better. I'm not a fan of casseroles that involve a lot of pre-cooking before baking, but I know regular Chicken Divan takes a lot of work too, so I was willing to overlook that.

The chicken already had a lot of flavor from the cheese and being browned while the broccoli was a little bland. Next time I would pour all of the sauce over the broccoli (instead of half there, half on the chicken). We also ended up with a *lot* of water at the bottom of the casserole dish with no idea why.