Orzo and Fresh tomato sauce with ground pork and eggplant

We're sharing a "throw together" meal today. When I was meal planning I loosely came up with this recipe but Patrick and I put it all together in the kitchen as we were making it. We had ordered eggplant for our CSA and two were in the box. The recipe I was requesting the eggplant for only needed one so here we were with another lone eggplant. What to do??

Alongside that lone eggplant were three tomatoes that I had thought I would need for another recipe but over estimated. So with the eggplant and three tomatoes I thought an Italian dish would work well. We'd do a fresh tomato sauce tossed with sauteed eggplant. We added in an onion from the pantry and a pound of ground pork from the freezer with a few other odds and ends to pull it all together! It was a success, I'd say!

Fresh tomato sauce with ground pork and eggplant & Orzo
Ingredients
1/2 lb whole wheat orzo
1 lb ground pork
1 onion, diced
1 medium eggplant, diced into 1" chunks
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 medium or large tomatoes, rough chop
1 8 oz can plain tomato sauce
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions
Boil water and prepare orzo according to package directions.

Meanwhile in a large pan saute ground pork until loses pink color. Then add onion and eggplant; continuing to saute. Once the onion is translucent and the eggplant has softened add in garlic. Then add in fresh tomatoes and the tomato sauce. Warm through. Add in cooked orzo and Parmesan cheese.

Salad bar assist

Popping in today with a short blog post and a quick idea for a weekend lunch or light dinner - it's a salad bar assist from your local grocery store.

A few weekends ago Patrick and I were both home doing an assortment of things and were getting hungry. My meal plans do not typically include three meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for both Saturday and Sunday. I do my best to have some heavy snacks on hand and bread to make sandwiches. Our weekend days are usually a late brunch, afternoon snacks, and then dinner. On this particular day I was going to the grocery store on the weekend and knew afternoon snack was quickly approaching. Knowing we had some lettuce in the fridge I decided to get some salad bar toppings at the grocery store to bring home for an entree salad.

Patrick wholeheartedly approved! My assist from the salad bar included boiled eggs, cucumbers, chicken strips, cheese, orzo with sun-dried tomatoes and capers, and seafood salad.

Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are a great staple to have in your pantry during the colder months. I love that they store well and don't go bad quickly; they also microwave well which makes these great for dinners that need to come together in a short time period or something not requiring much prep. Needless to say I request these from the CSA quite a bit!

On this particular evening we had eaten a bigger lunch and wanted something on the smaller side for dinner. This could also be a good "meat-less" meal option. If you're interested in that you'll have to omit the bacon. I sauteed a bit of bacon for this stuffed sweet potato and that could certainly be omitted but it was tasty.

Here's what we did

Microwave 1 large sweet potato until tender when pierced with a fork.

Meanwhile saute bacon in a medium skillet. Add in 1 diced onion after bacon begins to crisp up.

After bacon and onions are ready, add 1 can of rinsed black beans to warm through.

Slice the sweet potato in half and scoop out the inside. Add the bean mixture to a bowl and combine with the scooped out sweet potato. To the mixture add some shredded cheddar cheese.

Return the sweet potato mixture to the scooped out skins and put under a low broil setting until cheese is melted. Serve topped with sour cream. 

Since I had used a whole can of beans and chose a large sweet potato, there was a bit of filling leftover (maybe about 1/3 cup or so). I saved it and turned it into a delicious breakfast a few days later. For the breakfast I reheated the sweet potato mixture in a small skillet with a little evoo. While that was warming, I made some quick-cooking grits and fried two eggs. Served the sweet potato mixture on top of the grits and then put the egg on top! Patrick may have been a few minutes late to work this day but I think he'd say it was worth it!

Shrimp and Creamed Corn Dish

Here is a wonderful, fresh summer dish that can be enjoyed on hot evenings. Now's a great time to take advantage of fresh corn which is exactly what we did for this dish. We made this dish a few weeks ago when we were coming in from our Memorial Day weekend beach trip. We arrived into town Monday afternoon and after unloading the car we went straight to the grocery store. Since we were away Friday through Monday I didn't have much in the kitchen.

Most of our throw together meals involve putting things together from the pantry and fridge/freezer. This throw together was a little different -- whatever looked for dinner at the store went into the cart! Local corn was just starting to appear in our stores so we grabbed some corn and decided to make a deconstructed seafood corn chowder of some type. Once we were home it evolved into creamed corn with sauteed shrimp and roasted broccoli. Here's what we did...

 

   For the shrimp

Patrick did a simple saute with butter, lemon, and garlic. 

   For the broccoli

We had a broccoli steam in the bag on hand in the freezer. After steaming I tossed in olive and seasonings and put in the toaster to roast for about 5 minutes so it would have a bit more texture.

   For the corn

Alton Brown's Creamed Corn from Food Network
Ingredients
1/2 onion, diced
1 tablespoon butter
2 pinches kosher salt
8 ears fresh corn
1 sprig fresh rosemary, bruised
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon turmeric (we omitted)
2 tablespoons yellow cornmeal
1 cup heavy cream
Fresh ground black pepper
   We halved everything
Directions
   In a saucepan over medium heat, sweat the onion in butter and salt until translucent.
   In a large mixing bowl, place a paper bowl in the middle of the bowl. Resting the cob on the bowl in a vertical position remove only the tops of the kernel with a knife, using long smooth downward strokes and rotating the cob as you go. After the cob has been stripped, use the dull backside of your knife to scrape any remaining pulp and milk off the cob.
   Add the corn and pulp mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium high until the juice from the corn has tightened. Add the rosemary. Sprinkle the corn with the sugar and turmeric. Stir constantly for about 2 minutes. Sprinkle the cornmeal onto the corn, using a whisk to combine well. Add the heavy cream and cook until the corn has softened, about 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the rosemary. Season with freshly ground black pepper.

After mixing it all together!!

Ramen with things

At the end of April Patrick took a solo trip to Chicago to celebrate his brother's birthday.

I took advantage of my time sans husband and had girlfriends over! On Saturday Marianne came over for some gardening and an outdoor picnic. Then on Sunday Stephanie came over for another outdoor picnic and an "August: Osage County" viewing. I think we both decided it wasn't our favorite movie.

You might can imagine I fixed some nicer meals for these outdoor picnics with friends which is true. But I couldn't sustain the nicer meals when I was eating by myself. Saturday evening I fixed boring ramen noodles but made them not boring!

Before I started cooking the ramen I peered into our vegetable drawer to see what CSA vegetable goodies I had hanging around that I could use. I found some kale and spring onions that would be perfect this. I also grabbed an egg. I did quite a bit of google browsing to figure out the best way to make ramen noodles unboring (a quick google search of how to make your ramen noodles better brings up more hits than you can read in a day).

Here's what I did:

   Bring water to a boil and add half the seasoning packet. Once boiling add in ramen. After a minute drizzle the egg (that I had scrambled) around the pot so that it creates threads of cooked egg. Then add in chopped kale to wilt. Everything should be done in another minute. I added the chopped spring onions on top as a garnish with a bit more of the seasoning packet. 

This was the most filling ramen ever! Any of yall have good ramen recipe hacks for making it unboring / better?? If please share!

Throw Together Times Three

A few weeks ago we had three "throw together" meals in a row! I explained the throw together meal in that meal plan post. Basically it's dinner made with everything we already have (so no grocery trip to supplement a few ingredients). Sometimes they turn out really good and sometimes they're a miss. But since it's using up things on hand no two are ever alike! Here are the details on the three we made in a row. Since these weren't very official blogging recipes I just snapped photos with my phone.

Throw Together #1
Pork Loaf with Crispy Potatoes

Patrick whipped up the pork loaf (something similar to this) and topped it with a dijon mustard-apricot jam glaze. We had some lettuce that needed to be eaten so that became the salad topped with some balsamic vinaigrette. At first that was going to be all but then I remembered we have some potatoes in the pantry so we roasted a few for crispy potatoes. Typically I buy yukon gold potatoes in the 3 or 5 lb bag since they keep so long and more than likely have a potato at our disposal.

Throw Together #2
Italian Chicken with Penne

I had seen a recipe for chicken with orzo and sun-dried tomatoes and thought we could totally do that. Patrick likes to buy our sun-dried tomatoes from Costco so that means it's a rather large jar that takes us awhile to get through. Usually we have some orzo but when I went to start dinner and grab it from the pantry there was no orzo to be found!! Throw together inspiration now needs to be altered. We had celery and carrots in the fridge so I chopped those up with an onion then added a large can of San Marzo tomatoes to stew down thus making a basic Italian sauce. We boiled some penne and baked a chicken breast with some Italian seasonings. We even had another salad from a second head of lettuce that needed to be used up in the fridge!

Throw Together #3
Crab cakes with Salad

When the third throw together meal night was coming around I wasn't sure we could produce another meal! But then I remembered we had a can of lump crab meat ready for whenever we wanted it. This has been one of our newest additions to our Costco shopping trips. We followed this recipe for the crab cakes we made for one of our anniversary dinners; the recipe calls for you to bake it but we decided to fry it. Unfortunately they fell apart but it didn't take away from their tastiness! We had some arugula leftover from a meal the previous week and added that to round out the plate.

Three very successful throw together meals! I think we were pleased with ourselves since our throw together success rate isn't usally this high especially for three in a row!

French Toast

There have been a few posts recently detailing ways in which we are trying to efficiently use all of our food. We're not always so successful and do end up with some food waste. This is one of the reasons we have our throw together meals. Why buy something for a new meal when we have everything we need for one already?

I've mentioned recently that we're figured out how to not waste ricotta (first use - savory dinner; second use to reduce waste - breakfast!).  Well another food product that poses thoughtful planning for using all of it up - sandwich buns. I like to plan a sandwich in our meal plan every now and then but it's hard to account for all 6 buns in the bag! If only there was packaging for couples...

What we learned from ricotta we applied to buns! Make the second use breakfast! Sometimes I do toast the buns and then put them in the food processor to make bread crumbs but we don't use bread crumbs a whole lot so this isn't always practical for leftover buns.

Wondering what we did with our buns?! We made french toast! We had leftover brioche rolls from Sloppy Joes and they were a perfect mix to break up boring weekday breakfasts of cereal and bagels.

I'm sure everyone has a basic french toast recipe. For ours, I sliced the buns into 1" thick slices then soaked each side in an egg mixture (2 eggs mixed with cinnamon and 1/2&1/2 -- I forgot vanilla!) before placing them into a buttered hot pan. Cooked each side until lightly browned and served with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Easy Throw Together French Toast

What do you do with leftover buns??

Soba noodles throw together

We're at it again with utilizing pantry supplies! This time it was soba noodles and sweet potatoes!

These posts are never much for a solid recipe but, hopefully, more inspiration to go into your pantry / freezer / fridge and make good use of those groceries you've already purchased! Literally everything in this meal came from something we already had. Here, I'll prove it to you:

Soba noodles - I buy something similar to this from Harris Teeter; in the package are 3 separate bundles of soba noodles which I find perfect for 2 servings. Therefore 1 package = 3 meals for us.
Chicken breast - Patrick and I stock up on frozen individually packaged chicken breasts from Costco so we usually always have these in the freezer
Asian dressing - This is one of the few (maybe the only) prepared dressings we keep on hand since we typically dress our salads from our stash of oils and vinegars. I find this is great to have because it's versatile enough that it can be used as a marinade. It's officially Ken's Lite Asian Sesame with Ginger & Soy dressing.
Sweet potatoes - Think we used the last sweet potato from our CSA here (they keep so long!!)
Edamame - I usually don't have this in the freezer (I like to buy the frozen shelled edamame to toss into Asian dishes for the extra nutrients) but on this occasion I had a bag which I had bought for a previous dish and forgot to use it then
Arugula - Used half a bag for a previous recipe in the week and tossed the rest into the dish (certainly could've done without the arugula)
Soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, sesame oil, sriracha - All things we keep on hand

Then once you know what you're working with, figure out how to put it all together and assemble!

For this throw together, I thawed my chicken breast earlier in the day and then let it marinate in the dressing for an hour or so while the rest of the items were prepped. I knew the soba noodles and edamame would cook fast (and that I could also boil them in the same pot simultaneously). So baking the sweet potatoes and chicken would be the first priority.

I diced the sweet potatoes into small bite-size chunks so that they would cook faster and then I could just toss them into the final dish without any trouble. The sweet potatoes were drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper before putting them into a preheated 400F oven. After 15 minutes, I lowered the oven to 375F, gave the sweet potatoes a stir, and added the chicken breast to the side of the pan to cook with the sweet potatoes. Then they finished baking in about 20-25 minutes (we always have a kitchen thermometer handy to check internal temps).

While the sweet potatoes and chicken were baking, I prepped a quick dressing / light sauce to toss the whole dish with (which I adapted from here). It was about 2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp sesame oil, dash of sriracha, and dash of ground ginger.

Meanwhile in a pot of boiling water cook edamame and soba noodles according to package directions. I think the edamame called for 5 minutes and the soba noodles for 3 minutes so the edamame went in the pot first and then after 2 minutes the soba noodles followed!

Finally toss everything together: sweet potatoes, baked chicken breast (dice it up first), drained soba noodles and edamame, dressing, and the fresh arugula.

Hope this empowers you to have a "throw together" meal as Patrick and I so lovingly call them. And remember not all throw together meals are a hit! And no two throw together meals are ever the same...