Try new recipes.

We are getting tons of lettuce this time of year from our CSA. I decided tonight to try making chicken salad for lettuce wraps. I made it up, a breast of chicken in small chunks, peapods chunked (from CSA), cucumber (from CSA), raisins, mayo, apple cider vinegar, and then grape tomatos sliced up too. Dang, it was really good. I’ll definitely utilize random chicken breasts for this in the future.

Made my own sauce, even, which was easy and this turned out really well.

Today I made my own recipe! I’ve never just come up with any recipe by myself before. So I think I’ve accomplished this goal. I’ve pretty consistently been trying new stuff, and I think I can keep that up.

Cooking is so fun! :)

I tried a new recipe that was for homemade granola bars. However, it turned out more crumbly than chewy and was practically just oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips in bar shapes. :(

not that this is a recipe, really, but we just had never done it at our house. But my dad had this great idea to smash up corn tortilla chips for the batter, so it doesn’t contain wheat. This past week we dug out a cast iron skillet and fried the fish (caught from the lake last summer) outside on the burner on our grill so our house wouldn’t smell like fish, and it turned out great. Now that we know what we’re doing, I think it can be added as something in the rotation.

I made peanut butter cookies today. And they were delicious. I also printed out a recipe for granola bars, so I am going to try that later this week or next week, hopefully.

Considering I’m planning on going through a whole cookbook (and it’s a big one), I think this is done. :)

The porkchops we usually grill or broil get a little dry. I made some today in the crock pot with a apple/apricot glaze. They were pretty good. Not quite as good as I was hoping, but a good recipe. I think next time I will cook twice as long on low rather than on high like the recipe suggested.

So that’s the good news…I tried four new recipes this week. The bad news is that I have no immediate plans for anything new this week.

My husband and I had this tonight, which we will for sure keep in the list. It was very easy, and I don’t even like yams but thought they were good in this dish. The only thing I would change from the recipe is to use orange juice concentrate instead of orange juice so the yummy sauce would be a bit thicker and easier to eat with rice.

http://workitmom.com/bloggers/orderingdisorder/2008/02/21/in-the-crockpot-chicken-curry-with-sweet-potatoes-and-coconut-rice/#more-126

The other thing I’m going to add to the list is crock pot pork chops in some form or another…I find it’s so hard to make pork chops and keep them from drying out, so I’m going to try a recipe I found with apples/apricots and add some raisins.

one last night and one tonight.

Last night I tried a lemon/chicken bake with potatoes and beans. It was good, but a little TOO lemony towards the bottom. I kind of thought that would be impossible, but it was really sour down there. So I’m thinking that I’m going to try it again, but alter it with maybe oranges instead so the beans don’t get as sour.

Today I made lentil soup in the crock pot. Excellent! I cut up all the veggies and ham on Monday when i was preparing for the chicken bake, so this morning I just dumped it all in the crcok pot before I left for work. It’s very filling and makes a lot, so I think this will not be in a weekly rotation by any means, but we both really enjoyed it so it’s for sure one recipe that is added to our list.

If anyone else here would like to give it a try, the recipe I used and modified only slightly is http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Slow-Cooker-Lentil-and-Ham-Soup/Detail.aspx?prop31=3