How about more Adventures In Cooking?

Last week Mike had surgery and we knew he wouldn't be doing anything yummy in the kitchen. I took a few days off of work to take care of the boys and him.

I knew the chances of escaping to my scrap room was going to be slim to none (it ended up being a total of 30 minutes in the middle of the night in the past week). I needed some kind of creative outlet while he was down.

We had takeout Wednesday night after his surgery, which was less than exciting. And I had to do some grocery shopping so we could eat. So to plan some meals I flipped through the latest Cooking Light magazine.  I had two missions, something new and minimal food wasted.

My first trip to the store on Thursday morning was a quick run into Super Target for mostly fresh produce.

That afternoon I made my first attempt at Mike's Pico De Gallo, and the cover recipe Chicken and Guacamole Tostadas.  A super easy no bake recipe, that we had for leftover lunches all weekend. It will now be in heavy rotation for Friday night dinners. I didn't do so bad at Mike's Pico either.

I also made the Oreo Truffles (see yesterday's post here)

Friday was grocery shopping and Costco day, so I finalized my weekend meal plans.  Friday night I made the boys a cheese pizza and Mike and I had this Cobb Salad Pizza. It was so yummy it will definitely be repeated.

We had leftover chicken from the night before and I had extra potatoes from the dish I planned to make Saturday night so I did some chopping of that and some veggies and threw it in a skillet with some eggs on Saturday morning.

Topped with a bit of Pico de Gallo and cheese we had a chicken egg hash for breakfast Saturday with lots of leftovers for the coming week.

Saturday night I made a simple Arugula salad with a Dijon Vinaigrette from the magazine...

to go with Chili Espresso Rubbed Steaks with Warm Tomato Sauce. The rub was to die for. Mike manned the grill that night so I could get the boys bathed and ready for bed.

Accompanying the steak was Roasted Fingerling Potatoes with Dijon. 

We had lots of leftover potatoes, steak and veggies so I chopped them all up and made a steak hash inspired by one found in the magazine, but I didn't really pay attention to their recipe, just used my own leftovers and scrambled my eggs.

Again, lots of leftovers for weekday breakfasts.

We finished off the weekend with some seafood. Some crab claws

Made the base for this Spicy Corn and Crab Chowder. Which was only about medium spicy which is perfect for me.

I used up the lettuce and veggies  from the previous nights using the same Dijon vinaigrette that I used on Saturday nights salad.

And this accompanied Pan Grilled Salmon with Red Pepper Salsa. We bought our salmon at Costco, so we had big enough pieces to cut in half and save the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Also, I couldn't keep these boysenberries out of my cart at Costco. So we picked up some shortcakes and paired them with some vanilla ice cream cups we had in the freezer. I made a quick dessert inspired by this one in the magazine. I just wanted to keep it simple, since I had already done plenty of cooking for the weekend.

So my past weekend cooking adventures were numerous. I now plan to take a few off, and put Mike back to work in the kitchen.