Summer Eats
About three times a year I get completely sick of our normal menus and start looking for new recipes to try. Usually it works out to January (when we are burned out on heavy holiday food), March (when we switch on the A/C) and November (when it gets cool enough to bake again). I’m really weird about turning on my oven. If it’s hot out and the A/C is on, I just don’t want the additional heat in my small kitchen. So we grill out on the back deck and I use my stove top and little toaster oven. Sometimes I’ll pull out my portable roaster oven if we want a ham or something. That way I can set it outside, or in the utility room. In the summer we eat a lot of grilled chicken, salmon, shrimp, tilapia, pork tenderloin, kabobs. After eating salmon every week for 2 years I’m so burned out. Just thinking of salmon makes me ill. We need a change.
So, this past weekend I tried out a few new recipes:
A PF Chang’s knock-off recipe, Mongolian Beef. Tasty, but there was too much cornstarch on the beef, which made the sauce kinda gloppy.
Italian flank steak with rosemary mashed cannellini beans. This recipe came from one of Chris’ Men’s Health magazines. I really liked the mashed cannellini beans. We took a can of Progresso beans, a little bit of olive oil, rosemary, salt, pepper, minced garlic, heated for a few minutes and mashed it up.
Rosemary bread. This recipe was perfect and super easy since it was from the bread machine.
Here are a few more I want to try in the next week or so: Orange Peel Chicken, Baja Fish Tacos, and probably chicken or pork tacos using Penzey’s Rojo seasoning. If you have any great summer recipes, send them my way.
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I would like to suggest the next (extremely Summer friendly)menu item from Lauren’s Book of Cooking (It’s right after the pepperoni pizza bread). BBQ Hot Dogs! This is the fabulous dish that I dined on tonight. Here’s the recipe:
Hot Dogs(the cheaper the better!)
BBQ Sauce
Slice Hot Dogs. Put in Saucepan with BBQ sauce. Heat on medium to medium-low heat until the sauce begins to bubble. Serve warm.
Alternatively: Serve on a platter with toothpicks for a fancy appetizer!
And that is it. It’s really that easy! I really should have taken the step by step pictures the way the Pioneer Woman does, but I think you will be able to handle it.
If this doesn’t do it for you there is always the Bologna Bowls on the next page of the cookbook!
(Anyways the Rosemary bread looks fabulous and the mashed beans I might have to try. I went to the site and someone said the it was like the Macaroni Grill bread. Is it that good? Are the beans good enough to fool Tyler into thinking they are mashed potatoes?)
Lol at the BBQ dogs. You know, Chris actually wouldn’t eat that. He’s very “mustard only”.
The bread is really good. I haven’t been to a Macaroni Grill in at least 12 years, so I can’t say how it compares. The beans are very mashed potato like and the bean flavor is pretty mild.