the goose loves new recipes

Happy Thursday, Friends!

I think it's time for me to change things up a bit - instead of boring you with ten things on a Tuesday (or Wednesday, since I'm a procrastinator), I'll update you on what we've been cooking/eating recently. That's fun, right? It's really that I didn't want to waste my ten Tuesady things on food items, so I'm sticking them all in the same post. You can drool on your keyboard along with me.

We're trying to be very economical with our shopping and cooking, so we're meal planning every few weeks and then buying the appropriate groceries that will lend themselves to several meals. We're also working through our pantry items and being creative with what's on hand. Of which there's plenty. The idea is that the less we go to the grocery store, the less we spend on groceries. Clever, right?

Probably 10 days ago, we took these things...

added them to these things:

poured this stuff on top:

and came out with this! Salmon mac n cheese. Yes please.

 We use the non-seasoned frozen salmon filets from Costco, and let me just tell you, for a moment, how much those things rock.

They thaw super fast, so if you're one of those people that gets home at 6pm starving, with "nothing" to eat in the house, you can just grab an individually wrapped (sorry environment) piece of salmon from the freezer, stick it in a bowl of warm water while you rip your work clothes off, and then grill it in a pan for about 3 minutes on each side.

Not that I have personal experience here - I always plan ahead for dinner and I'm never that excited to get into sweats and comfy t-shirts immediately when I get home. Right. If only they weren't $25/bag.

The weekend before Easter, I whipped up some mini quiches for breakfast. These are super easy - you basically take whatever meat (optional) and veggies and cheese you have in the fridge and throw them together with some eggs. I like putting them in the mini cupcake tin for bite-size perfection.

Just don't forget to spray your pan with a little PAM action first, lest you pour all your uncooked-quiche-batter-stuff back into the bowl before baking because you forgot to grease the pan, only because you know that if you bake them ungreased, those suckers will never come out of the pan.

Again, not that I have much experience there.

After daydreaming about them for days, I finally made the Pesto Parmesan Scones from How Sweet Eats. And they were as divine as in my dreams. I'm sorry the picture does not do them justice.

They basically taste like buttery pesto clouds from heaven in your mouth. Never knew you wanted that, huh. But now you do.

We ate them with over-medium eggs over fried tomatoes. Two eggs for Billy, one for Lucy.

And finally, we are walking away from our comfort zone to tackle a few of the recipes in the free cookbook we got from UP awhile back. We've already made two of the curries in the book, so we only have about 598 left to choose from. Oh my, so few choices.

Most recently, we made a version of Chicken Vindaloo, which was mostly chicken, vinegar, coconut milk, and spices. We added some craisins for fun. And boy were they fun.

Currently on our food plan, we're targeting a potato-spinach curry, along with a white bean & ham soup to use some of our Easter bounty (yeah, the Easter post is coming soon, I promise) and pasta puttanesca.

Fun fact for you - Wikipedia (the ultimate source of accurate information) points out that literally translated, pasta puttanesca means "whore's style spaghetti", which makes it sound very fun to try. It uses capers, anchovies, olives, garlic, and tomatoes, among other things, which oddly enough, we have on hand. And it actually sounds kind of tasty. So we'll update you on that.

Anybody else making any whore food recently? (Sorry about all the whore-talk, Mom!)