On a blogging hiatus

In case you haven't noticed by the infrequency of my posts, I am on a blogging hiatus right now. I started a different blog for my law practice, and I think that will be where I will do a majority of my blogging for a while. The subject matter of that blog is quite different from this blog :)

I started this blog to keep track of the different recipes that we tried when we tightened our grocery budget from $120/week to $80/week. We didn't always meet our $80/week goal, but we came close. I know that meal-planning really made a difference for us.

We aren't trying out a lot of new recipes right now, mostly because it takes time to look for new recipes, and we are both lacking time right now. I will definitely update this blog when I try out a new recipe, though... it just might be a while :)

We tried out a new cookbook...

We used one of our Christmas gifts, a Barnes and Noble gift card, to purchase "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann. Here is a link to it.

We are not in love with this cookbook. The recipes are good (not amazing), but most of them require a lot of prep work, and the results are just average. We got this cookbook because we were hoping to find some healthy crockpot recipes that we could make somewhat quickly since I am busy with my new business, part-time job, and my extra-curricular activities, and E is busy with work, working overtime, and school. Instead, the required prep work makes me dread making a lot of the recipes in this cookbook. Also, the recipes generally don't have someone with an 8-hour (or longer) workday in mind, and the cooking times are a little difficult to work with. I like the idea behind this cookbook, though.

Lasagna Rolls

I made Giada's Lasagna Rolls two months ago, but I'm finally getting around to blogging about them today. I followed the recipe almost exactly, except I doubled the bechamel sauce, and I think that it was a good choice to do that. I also used store bought marinara sauce; I can't remember which brand I used, though. This was a great recipe, and it was fun to make the lasagna rolls. We ended up with quite a few leftovers, but there were no complaints about that :)

Crockpot Recipe Reviews

To Die for Crock Pot Roast

• I love pot roast. It's one of my favorite comfort foods. This is a very simple recipe, but it calls for some high-sodium gravy and salad dressing mixes. In order to cut down on the sodium, I used half of each packet, and the roast was still good.
• We added a bag of baby carrots and 5 peeled and quartered potatoes at the end. I let just the roast, seasonings, and water cook on low for 5 hours. Then I took out the roast, and added the potatoes and carrots to the bottom of the crockpot, and put the roast on top of it. I cooked that on high for 2 more hours.
• Also, since we have a larger crockpot, I added 1.5 cups of water, instead of just 1/2 cup.
• I think we used a 3 or 4 pound chuck roast, and we had a lot of leftovers. We don't mind having a lot of leftovers (we froze some) because we both love pot roast.

Crockpot Potato Soup

• We didn't change anything about this recipe's ingredients, and we both thought it was really good. This was another easy to make recipe.
• You can buy lower-sodium bouillon, if you want to reduce the salt in this recipe. I also didn't add a whole teaspoon of salt. I added a teaspoon of black pepper, though, and I thought it flavored the soup nicely.
• Finally, instead of using a slotted spoon and a traditional blender in step 3, an immersion blender makes things a lot easier. Transferring hot soup ingredients from a crockpot, to a blender, and then back into the crockpot is a lot of effort... and if you're me, a lot could go wrong during that process. Immersion blenders are the best :)

Crock Pot Chicken with Black Beans and Cream Cheese

• In this post (towards the bottom of it), I referred to trying out a Crockpot Salsa Chicken recipe. Both of us thought that the recipe in that post was WAY too salty.
• I came across this recipe and decided to try it out. The cream cheese probably does not make it low-fat, but I think that it would still be good without the cream cheese.
• We used frozen corn instead of canned corn.
• I also liked that the recipe suggested using frozen chicken breasts; we always have frozen chicken breasts in our freezer... and we don't always remember to thaw them.
• The night before we made this, I made a batch of rice, and put it in the fridge.
• Instead of cooking it on high for 4-5 hours, I cooked it on low while I was at work (about 8 hours, including commuting time), and then added the cream cheese when I got home, and turned the crockpot up to high. After 30 minutes, the cream cheese was softened, but we still had to stir it so it would be a little more evenly distributed.
• Then we heated up the rice in the microwave and served this on top of rice. We both really liked it, and we had plenty of leftovers.

Happy New Year!

It's been a little over a month since I've posted anything. It was a busy month, though. We got a lot of snow, and had a lot of bad weather here. E and I also took a cruise, and got home a week before Christmas. The day before Christmas Eve, when I was driving home from work, I was rear-ended. I ended up having whiplash, and am still dealing with some pain and appointments from that. I feel very lucky, though, because no one was seriously injured.

As for Christmas itself, due to the weather, our celebrating plans had to change. E and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day together, but alone (except for RatDog of course). It was actually really nice. We got to go to the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. Then, on Christmas Day we made food, reorganized our house, and went to see Avatar 3-D. When we came home, we ate the food that we had made earlier that day, and played board games. It was a lot of fun.

I'm not going to comment much about a certain Christmas party that took place after Christmas, because this is a public blog... but let's just say that the party that we hosted on the Sunday after Christmas was not what we had hoped, due to the attitudes of 2 people in particular. Although some people don't want to have a positive attitude towards life, my goal is to ALWAYS keep a positive attitude. Unfortunately, I don't always live up to this goal. Negative and crabby people aren't very fun to be around, though, in my opinion. Luckily, the night after our not-so-fun post-Christmas event, we hosted a dinner party for a couple of E's friends from college and their wives/girlfriends, and that was a lot of fun.

E and I both got new running shoes for Christmas. We have been doing all of our running in those new shoes on a treadmill at the gym, because we are not courageous enough to run in this weather. One positive part about working out at the gym: the sauna. The sauna sure feels nice compared to the weather outside :)

I hope that everyone had a great holiday season, and that you are having a great 2010!

Beef Stroganoff and Black Bean & Corn Creamchiladas

Beef Stroganoff

• Yum! E loved this, and RatDog took his dinnertime begging to a new level when I made this.
• I didn't bother making the house seasoning, because I didn't want to have to store it. Instead, I just mixed up a little bit of salt, garlic powder and black pepper. Easy enough. Don't make the mistake that one commenter made; they used ALL of the house seasoning in this recipe, and ended up with a WAY over-salted (1 cup of salt) dish.
• We served the beef stroganoff over mashed potatoes instead of egg noodles, because after Thanksgiving a big bag of potatoes was on sale at Target for 50 cents. What a deal :)
• I also used low-sodium cream of mushroom soup.

Black Bean and Corn Creamchiladas

• This was an easy-to-prep recipe; it was great to make after work.
• I really liked the sharp flavor of the low-fat cream cheese. E didn't love it as much as I did, but he does not love cheese the way that I do.
• I forgot to cover it before baking it, so the tortillas got a little crispy and (lightly) browned. It was still good.
• I didn't love the taste of the roma tomatoes on the top. Next time I might just top them with pre-made (and probably less healthy) salsa.

Trying some recipes out for Christmas

E and I will be hosting Christmas for his family this year. We experimented with a couple of recipes to see if either one would work for Christmas dinner. It's going to be a tough decision :)

Turkey Lasagna

• E loves lasagna, and I love goat cheese, so this recipe was pretty much perfect for us.
• I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that I used dried parsley and basil instead of fresh, because I wanted to freeze half of the lasagna, and I don't think that fresh herbs always freeze that well. I've noticed that sometimes frozen basil in a tomato sauce gets a slight metallic flavor.

Crockpot Pulled Pork

• I followed the recipe exactly. I served it with extra barbecue sauce and thought it was delicious.
• Basically it's comfort food at its finest :)

We are leaning towards serving the crockpot pulled pork at our Christmas celebration because it definitely was less work than the turkey lasagna was, and it might be more kid-friendly than turkey lasagna. Also, we want to make things as simple as possible, because the holidays can be a lot of work :)

Indonesian Chicken Satays

This is another favorite recipe of ours; we actually like a lot of the recipes in this cookbook. I recommend mixing up the marinade before you head to work, and let the chicken and marinade work its magic in the fridge during the day. Also, you should serve it with a peanut sauce. I recommend making the peanut sauce the night before, just to make things easier. Here is a link to a peanut sauce recipe.

Indonesian Chicken Satays

Clare Ferguson

"Chicken: From Maryland to Kiev"

pg. 103

Ingredients:

• 1 TBSP. brown sugar
• freshly squeezed juice of 2 limes
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly cracked black pepper
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed
• 2 TBSP. soy sauce
• 1/3 cup thick coconut milk, from the top of the can
• 1 TBSP. molasses
• a handful of cilantro roots and leaves, chopped
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, about 1 1/2 lb.
• 2 TBSP. peanut oil
• 16 bamboo satay sticks, soaked in water for 30 min.
• Peanut Sauce

Directions:

1) Put the brown sugar, lime juice, salt, pepper, garlic, soy sauce, coconut milk, molasses, and cilantro into a saucepan and bring to a boil.

2) Simmer for 3-4 minutes, then remove from the heat and cool quickly over ice.

3) Transfer to a shallow glass or china dish.

4) Slice the chicken lengthwise into even strips or ribbons. Add to the marinade. Stir well to cover. Marinate for 20 minutes or up to 8 hours in the refrigerator.

5) When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

6) Drain the chicken, then push an even number of strips onto each satay stick, threading them on in pleated waves.

7) Brush each satay with a little peanut oil.

8) Lay the bamboo satay sticks across a baking pan. (I use something like this)

9) Baste the chicken with the marinade

10) Cook for 15-20 minutes, turning over after 10 minutes.

11) Serve with peanut sauce.

Note: The recipe in the cookbook also provides instructions for making these on the grill, in a stove-top grill pan, or in the broiler. We have only made them in the oven so far.

Trinidadian Split Pea Soup

When I was in high school and as a freshman in college, I was a vegetarian. I ended the vegetarianism when I traveled to Cuba for two weeks. It seemed like it would be inappropriate of me to request special meals when people there were living off of rations.

My mom always worried about me getting enough nutrients. When I came home from college for winter break, my mom and I went to the book store, and bought this cookbook. My mom and I chose a recipe together, and then went to buy the ingredients. She wanted me to learn how to cook and eat a healthier vegetarian meal than what I had become accustomed to eating (I didn't really like vegetables back then). She and I made this soup together. I made it a few weeks ago, and it was still as good as I remembered it to be.

Trinidadian Split Pea Soup

from Madhur Jaffrey's "World Vegetarian"

Pg. 602-603

Ingredients:

• 3 TBSP peanut or canola oil (I used peanut oil)
• 1 "good-sized" onion, peeled and finely chopped (I used my special chopper to quickly chop the onion, celery stalk, garlic, and chile)
• 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 fresh hot green chile, finely chopped
• 1 tsp. chopped fresh thyme or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme (I used dried thyme)
• 1 TBSP. finely sliced chives (I used green onion)
• 1 cup coarsely grated peeled carrot
• 1 cup yellow split peas (picked over, rinsed, drained)
• 6 cups vegetable stock
• salt
• pepper
• 1 cup of diced yam (one large yam diced into 3/4 inch pieces)
• Tabasco sauce, or lime juice and cayenne pepper to season the soup.

Directions:

1) Put the oil in a large pan and set over medium-high heat. When hot, put in the onion, celery, garlic, green chile, thyme, and chives. Stir and saute for 5 minutes; a little browning should be encouraged.

2) Add the carrot and continue to stir and fry for another 3 minutes.

3) Add the split peas and stock and bring to a boil.

4) Cover partially, turn the heat down to low, and simmer gently for 1 1/4 hours.

5) Add the yams. Simmer for about 15-20 more minutes; until the yams are soft.

6) When done, taste for salt, adding as much as needed. Also add black pepper to taste.

7) Mix together lime juice and a little bit of dried cayenne. Use this to season the soup at the table. Be careful, because a little cayenne goes a long way. You could also set out Tabasco sauce or another pepper sauce for seasoning the soup at the table.

Recipes from October and November

Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

• I made these on Halloween, in between groups of trick or treaters. A few times, E had to answer the door by himself because my hands were full of cookie dough. I also brought a few of these cookies to my grandpa while he was in the hospital.
• I highly recommend this recipe. We baked 2 dozen cookies that night, and I froze about 4 dozen cookie dough balls for later. Yummy!

Corn and Black Bean Quesadillas with Pepper Jack Cheese

• A couple of weeks ago, I bought a block of pepper jack cheese when it was on sale for 99 cents. We also had a lot of frozen corn, and some frozen crockpot black beans. This seemed like a good recipe for using them up.
• We made a double batch of these, because this recipe only serves 2, and we like to make at least 4 servings of a recipe so we can have leftovers for lunch.
• We both really liked these, and they were pretty easy to make.

Bacon Chicken Alfredo Pizza

• We had frozen rotisserie chicken, and quite a bit of bacon, and we didn't know what we were going to do with it. This was an easy recipe (nothing is from scratch) to make on a Monday night when we both worked during the day, and didn't feel like cooking a complicated dinner. It was good, too :)

Yam Fries

• I had an extra yam leftover after making Trinidadian Yellow Split Pea Soup (I will post the recipe soon). I made a half recipe of baked yam fries as a snack on Halloween. I thought that the color of the yam was very festive. And the fries were delicious :)

Updates

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. Things have been really busy at our house. First, a few weeks ago, we returned our original set of pots and pans to BB&B. Because I am a receipt saver, I still had the original receipt - and it wasn't that hard to find. We bought them (using gift cards from our wedding) when we returned from our honeymoon in August of 2008. Unfortunately, the pots and pans did not hold up as well as we had hoped. BB&B and Calphalon have great return policies (Calphalon has a lifetime guarantee), so it worked out fine for us. We ended up getting a set of stainless steel pots and pans, since we didn't want a whole set of non-stick pans. We really like this set; hopefully this one will hold up and be our set for a long long time. Because of the way BB&B calculates store credit (even with our receipt), we still had a decent chunk of store credit that we needed to spend there. We ended up applying the credit towards a breadmaker. I have not quite mastered the art of breadmaking yet, but hopefully it will happen soon :)

I was also sworn into the state bar a couple of weeks ago. That was exciting :)

Finally, today E and I ran a little over 2 miles without stopping. It was pretty windy and cold, but I was really proud of us. I keep thinking that we are on our last run outside for the season, but then the weather keeps tempting me. Especially since I prefer running outside to running on a treadmill.

Slow Cooker Cookbook

Last week when I was planning out our meals, I saw this book sitting on our bookshelf. I don't remember buying it, and neither does E.

This week, we tried 3 recipes from it:

• Pork, Pea, and Spinach Curry Soup
• Chicken Peanut Stew (we really like a non-slow cooker version of this recipe from this cookbook)
• Cuban Black Bean Stew

None of the recipes were bad, but they were all pretty average and somewhat bland. When I saw that this cookbook had a 2.5 star review on Amazon.com, I wasn't surprised. Again, the recipes weren't terrible, but they just weren't amazing.

We do really like this cookbook, though. It was one of the first cookbooks that E and I ever used together. Chicken is E's favorite meat, and I think that he borrowed the cookbook from his sister (and forgot to return it). It looks like we can buy it for a penny on Amazon.com now - maybe we should, so we can return "our" copy to E's sister :) Anyway, we've gotten some good use out of that cookbook. These are the recipes in that book that we really like:

• Indonesian chicken satays
• Jamaican jerk chicken
• Nigerian peanut and chicken stew
• jollof rice
• stir-fried chicken with greens
• chicken kabobs
• chicken with udon noodles

I get most of our recipes online, but sometimes it's nice to use a cookbook. Sometimes I will find myself making a lot of Italian and Tex-Mex recipes, and I forget about all of the other options that are out there. A cookbook allows you to browse without having to type anything into a search engine, so you might find yourself inspired to make something that you weren't originally planning on making.

Slow Cooker Pepper Steak, Chicken and Corn Pie with Cornbread Topping

It's been a while since I've reviewed recipes. Both of these recipes were delicious.

Slow Cooker Pepper Steak

• I followed the recipe, and it was really good.
• It was a little salty, even though I used lite/low-sodium soy sauce.
• I served it with rice.

Chicken and Corn Pie with Cornbread Topping

• This was a delicious recipe.
• I made this enchilada sauce up the day before. I used a little over half of it in this dish.
• I used frozen rotisserie chicken that we shredded before freezing it. The recipe called for 3 cups of chicken, but we only had 2 cups. It didn't seem to make a difference.
• I couldn't find a 6 oz. package of Mexican cornbread mix. I found a 7.4 oz. package of sweet corn cake mix. I used the whole package, and I don't think that it mattered.
• I also used 1/2 cup of shredded monterrey jack cheese and 1/2 cup of shredded cheddar cheese that I already had in my fridge instead of a Mexican cheese blend.
• Despite all of my substitutions/variations, this recipe was great. Very filling. We had it for dinner after we went for a run in some very windy and cold weather (the last time we went running outside, in fact). It was a great way to end our run.

I passed!

I passed the bar exam and will be sworn in at the end of the month. That is a huge relief.

I am thinking about starting my own law firm while continuing to work in my current part-time job. We will see what happens. I think that, as of right now, I would want it to be officially open for business in January 2010, but things could change. I'm nervous about the idea, but I also have a couple of good mentors, so I'm not as nervous about it as I once was.

I am still applying for jobs, and getting a lot of rejection letters and emails. The economy is (I'm going to state the obvious) unbelievably tough right now for job-seekers.

Rat Dog had surgery on Wednesday. He had a "mass" removed from his leg, and he had his teeth cleaned. He is not supposed to jump onto furniture or run up/down the stairs for ten days. This is supposed to prevent his stitches from ripping. He loves to run and jump, so it has been really difficult. He also has to wear a cone in order to prevent him from licking his stitches. It is really exhausting; I can't imagine how exhausting it must be to be a parent to a toddler. Dealing with post-surgery Rat Dog is enough for me right now.

We are still waiting to hear whether his mass was an infected bug bite or a bad (cancerous) tumor. I am really hoping that it was a bug bite.

Other than that, not much is new around here.

Baby Shower

On Sunday my mom and I co-hosted a baby shower for two of my cousins. It was nice to have the girls over, because some of my aunts and cousins hadn't been to our house before.

Here are some of the recipes that we used:

Rotisserie Chicken and Chicken Stock

• I bought a rotisserie chicken on Saturday. I took it home, and E and I removed the skin and shredded the rest of the chicken. I put half of it aside for the buffalo chicken dip. I used about 1/4 of it in the enchilada roll-ups, and I saved 1/4 of it to use later.
• When we shredded the chicken, we saved any pieces that were too fatty to use. We also saved the chicken carcass and the rest of the chicken bones. Then we put those pieces into the crockpot, filled it up with water, and added an onion (I just cut it into quarters) and some leftover carrot scraps. We cooked it on low for about 18 hours (most websites said to cook it for 12-18 hours), and then strained it and cooled it in a cold water bath in my sink. We ended up with about 12 cups of chicken stock. Yummy.

Buffalo Chicken Dip (based on this recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 of the meat from a rotisserie chicken, shredded
• 2 - 8 oz. packages of cream cheese (softened)
• 1/2 cup bleu cheese dressing
• 1/2 cup ranch dressing
• 3/4 cup of hot sauce (I used about 1/2 cup of Frank's Wings Buffalo Sauce, and 1/4 cup of Frank's Red Hot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce)
• 1/2 - 1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese
• French bread and tortilla chips - or whatever else you want to use.

Directions:

1) In a 1.5 quart (or larger) oven-safe dish, combine the chicken, cream cheese, dressing, and hot sauce.

2) Stir until well mixed. Then let it sit in the refrigerator for an hour or two.

3) Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350 degree oven. When 10 minutes remain, add the shredded cheddar cheese to the top of the dip.

*** Note: You may have to experiment a bit with the oven temperature and cooking time.

Chicken Enchilada Roll-Ups

• I used this recipe - I followed it pretty closely.
• Instead of using canned chicken, I used 1/4 of a rotisserie chicken.
• I also used a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper, because I didn't want the roll-ups to be too spicy.
• I used a 6-pack of jalapeno cheddar tortillas (they were actually called "wraps" at our grocery store, but they were located by the tortillas). It was almost enough. I had to use 1 regular white flour tortilla in order to use up the chicken enchilada filling.
• I mixed up the filling the day before the shower. I think it allowed the flavors to blend together nicely.
• It is easier to spread the filling onto the tortillas if you take the filling out of the fridge and let it sit for a while before you try to work with it.
• I also barely used any salt. Maybe between 1/8 and 1/4 tsp.

Baby Shower Menu

• Besides the buffalo chicken dip and the enchilada roll-ups, we also served: mini croissant sandwiches (different variations of ham, turkey, and cheese), a veggie tray with ranch and dill dip, a fruit bowl (grapes and strawberries), punch, pickles and olives, and water with lemon.
• We also bought two 7" cakes from Target's bakery - a red velvet cake and a chocolate indulgence cake. They were delicious.
• For the 12 guests, we had plenty of food. We have a lot of leftovers, so I will be eating leftover baby shower food for the rest of the week. I'm not complaining about that :)

Baby Shower Games and Other Details

• We bought a baby shower word search game at a local party store. It was trickier than we thought it was going to be.
• We also played this Baby Shower Bingo game. It took a lot longer than we thought it would. My grandma won the Bingo game, though, so that made the wait worth it.
• All in all, it was really fun to co-host a baby shower. I'm really glad that my mom was there to help me and co-host it with me; we wouldn't have been able to have the shower without her help. E was also a big help. Thank you Mom and E :)

66 and 55

I have applied for 66 jobs since the bar exam, and have now received 11 rejections. That means that I still have a chance at 55 jobs :) Luckily, I started a new part-time contract position in my field to help pay the bills until I find a full-time job. I am learning a lot there, so that's good. I am toying with the idea of opening up my own law practice, but I feel like I need a few more months (like until February or March) to make a well-informed decision. Of course, if I find a good, full-time job before then, that would be ideal.

It is a little frustrating for me because I tend to be "Type A". I am trying to keep a positive attitude. It's easier to keep a positive attitude on the days that I go into the office. It's a little more difficult when I am spending my days off at home. I know that once I find my real full-time job, I am going to miss the freedom that I currently have during the day, though.

This past spring, I attempted to run a 5K. I didn't train for it at all. I couldn't run most of it. On Sunday I decided to start the C25K program. Today was my second day of Week 1. There are a lot of C25K podcasts that you can download and listen to while you run, so you don't have to keep track of the time. I have really enjoyed it (all 2 days) so far.

Since my surgery, I have been worried about using headphones. Apparently headphones have magnets in them, and my neurosurgeon uses a giant magnet when he wants to adjust the setting on my shunt. Magnets in headphones can reset a person's shunt. If that happened to me, I would have to go into the doctor and have him set it back to the correct setting. Because our health insurance doesn't have the best coverage ever, it is really expensive for me to go to the neurosurgeon and have him readjust my shunt. I try to go in as little as possible (especially considering my current employment situation). My shunt is located really close to my left ear, so I have just been avoiding the use of headphones.

E came to my rescue so that I could listen to a podcast while running on the C25K program. He cut the left earbud off of a set of headphones for me. Now I can listen to my headphone in my right ear while I am running. This is a little thing, but it really made all the difference for me. It's so much easier to want to exercise when I can listen to music.

Recipe Reviews

Oven-dried tomatoes

• Even after forgetting to water it for 5 or more days, the cherry tomato plant is still producing tomatoes like crazy. We found ourselves with a "problem": what should we do with all of those tomatoes?
• I found a few different blogs that showed how to make oven-dried tomatoes. We love sun-dried tomatoes, but hate how expensive they are. This is a great alternative, and I read that people freeze these too. We haven't done any freezing yet, because we used up all of our oven-dried tomatoes, but I'm sure we will be freezing a batch soon.
• This is how I did it (copy-pasted from an email that I sent to my mom):

1) Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil

2) Cut the cherry tomatoes in half

3) Put the tomatoes in a bowl and drizzle them with a little (very little - if you put too much they won't dry/cook right) olive oil. Add a little pepper and sea salt. Then mix them up a little.

4) Put them on the cookie sheet with the cut side up (skin side touching the sheet/foil)

5) Put them in the oven at 325 degrees for about an hour. Some recipes say to cook them for 2 or more hours at 200 degrees. That will probably work too. After an hour at 325 degrees, most of the tomatoes were perfect. A couple of the smaller ones were burned... so maybe turning down the temp is a good idea? You just need to keep an eye on them.

Cottage Cheese Chicken Enchiladas

• This recipe was a 3-stepper. Here is a link to the enchilada recipe.
• The night before we had these for dinner, I made the chicken in the crockpot. I put a small chopped onion on the bottom of the crockpot, then added the can of diced green chiles (the enchilada recipe calls for a 7 oz. can). I used the equivalent of half of a package of taco seasoning mix (but I didn't use store bought taco mix - too much salt). Then I added 1/2 of a bottle of beer, and 2 frozen chicken breasts. I cooked it on low for 5 hours. When they were done cooking, it was super easy to shred them. Then I used a slotted spoon to remove the onions and chiles from the crockpot, and added them and a little bit of the cooking liquid to the shredded chicken.
• While the chicken was cooking in the crockpot, I made enchilada sauce. I was trying to avoid all of the salt in the store-bought canned enchilada sauce. I used this recipe. It made more than the 10 oz. can that the enchilada recipe called for, but I ended up using all of it in the enchiladas.
• The next day, I put all of the ingredients together and made the enchiladas. They were really good. They tasted even better as leftovers, and we had a lot of leftovers.

Polenta with Spinach, Black Beans, and Goat Cheese

• We have made this recipe since I was a 1L, and we both still really like it.
• It calls for 1/4 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, so we were able to save ourselves some money by using our oven-dried cherry tomatoes. Yummy!

Tomato-Cream Sauce for Pasta

• I was extremely underwhelmed by this recipe.
• E really liked it, but I didn't even want the leftovers. I wouldn't recommend it.

Chicken Parmesan Burgers

• We had these for dinner tonight. We made them on the grill.
• We used ground turkey instead of ground chicken (probably because of our previous bad experience with ground chicken).
• These were really good. Definitely an "E-style" meal, too :) He likes pretty much anything with a marinara sauce.
• Baby bellas were on sale this week, so we sauteed them and put them on our burgers. They were good, but probably weren't necessary if you are looking to save a few bucks :)

Cherry Tomatoes and Mac and Cheese

Well, our cherry tomato plant has been producing tomatoes like crazy. And despite my lack of gardening skills, it is still alive :)

We found a couple of good recipes for using up cherry tomatoes... and we also tried out a new Mac and Cheese recipe.

Chicken Pesto Pizza

• This was amazing! I loved the way the cherry tomatoes tasted on this pizza.
• We did things a little differently than the recipe.
• First, we grilled the chicken the day before.
• Also, when I made the pesto, I toasted the pine nuts and the garlic in the oven instead of on the stovetop. I knew I would be heating up the oven anyway (to bake the pizza), so it just made things easier. I set the oven to 325 degrees, and then toasted the pine nuts for 5 minutes and the garlic for 7 or 8 minutes. It worked out well.
• I would also recommend cutting the salt for the pesto in half. I would use 1/4 tsp instead of the 1/2 tsp that the recipe calls for.
• Finally, we cheated and didn't make our own pizza dough. Maybe we will learn how to make our own this winter... but we had to draw the line somewhere. We typically use the "Thin Crust" (not the "Classic") version of this. Then we just follow the directions on the tube for baking it. Someday we will use our mixer or food processor to make pizza dough, though.

Warm Tortellini and Cherry Tomato Salad

• Another great recipe, and a great use of our cherry tomatoes.
• It made A LOT, so we had enough for 4 servings of leftovers.
• I would consider cutting the asparagus into halves before cooking it, because it was difficult to get it to cook all the way through (especially closer to the ends of the asparagus) in 2 minutes.
• Here's a link to the recipe.

Mac and Cheese

• We have a favorite mac and cheese recipe already (if you make this recipe, be sure to not use as much salt as the recipe calls for), but I thought that it would be good to try out a new one.
• There's not much to say about our new recipe, except that it is really really good, and I will definitely make it again :) I highly recommend trying it out.

40 and 7

Since the bar exam (and since I had to resign from my previous job) I have applied to 40 jobs. I have been rejected by 7 of those jobs. Well, I have been expressly rejected by 7; who knows how many others have rejected me already, but haven't told me about the rejection.

I'm not complaining. I'm proud of myself for applying to 40 jobs. The first 20 jobs that I applied to were major "reach" jobs; my dream jobs. Now that I've applied for those, I can't say that I never tried.

Today I received a rejection from a job that I had interviewed for. I am typically a good interviewer, but I felt a little "off" at this interview. Even though it would have been nice to have this job (a job, period) it really wasn't the best job for me and my "skill set."

When I graduated from undergrad in December of 2003, the economy wasn't doing so hot (although it was nothing compared to now). I got a job in my field then. Hopefully I will be able to prove myself a second time - during the Great Recession.

A Batch of Recipes

5-Cheese Stuffed Shells with Homemade Tomato Sauce

• Here is the recipe for the stuffed shells.
• The tomato sauce was a little more complicated. I found this "how to" and decided to use the tomatoes from my MOH and the "baby" tomatoes from the plant that my mom gave us. I sort of followed the eHow instructions, but I added an onion (also from my MOH), and 1/2 cup of red cooking wine. I also used fresh oregano (leftover from another recipe), fresh basil and flat-leaf parsley (from our deck garden). It was super yummy, even though it took a while. I also recommend taking the seeds out of the tomatoes first (the eHow recipe doesn't say that you need to do that, but when I googled it, most websites said to remove the seeds before making tomato sauce).
• All in all, this recipe was good. Trying to stuff the shells wasn't that fun, though. Also, the recipe made a LOT of stuffed shells - enough that we froze a couple of servings for later.

Falafel with Tzatziki Sauce

• Even though the recipe doesn't clearly specify it in the ingredients list, you will want to have pitas and tomatoes to serve with this. Also, I didn't know how to make bread crumbs since I didn't have any dried bread sitting around our house. Lucky for me, the internet came to my rescue.
• We used this recipe for the falafel, but we didn't make the cucumber sauce from that recipe. Instead we used this recipe for Tzatziki.
• E made the Tzatziki the night before, and we only made 1/2 of the Tzatziki recipe. If you only plan on using the Tzatziki for the falafel, 1/2 of the recipe is the right amount. We used FAGE Greek yogurt for the Tzatziki, a cucumber (from our MOH), and we had to substitute mint leaves for fresh dill because we couldn't find fresh dill at the grocery store.
• This was a great recipe; I give it a double or even a triple recommend :)

Shredded, Saucy BBQ Chicken Sammies

• This is a good recipe for when you are craving something that is like a Sloppy Joe, but you don't want a Sloppy Joe.
• We usually end up freezing some of this to use later, because the recipe makes a lot.