Szechwan Stir Fry

I thought this was awesome. I got the inspiration from a Cooking Light recipe, but really ended up only using their sauce. I’m just obsessed with black bean garlic sauce these days.

This would be easy to make meatless (the original recipe is) – omit the pork, swap veggie broth.

Panko Potato Cakes

Ok, this is my advice for this recipe – don’t try to make it healthy. I tried to use very little oil and I had some serious trouble crisping them. A good use for leftover mashed potatoes, which we had on hand and transformed into this morning’s breakfast.

String beans w/ black bean sauce

I picked up black bean garlic sauce to make this szechuan tofu recipe, but I haven’t gotten around to making it yet. Decided to take it on a test drive with the green beans I made as a side dish for Stir Fry Sunday (this week: chow mein). Gave a nice, pungent, umami taste to things.

Guinness Short Ribs

We had a St. Patrick’s Day potluck at work, and this was my contribution.. I based this recipe on one I remembered from a long time ago and always wanted to try, back when Scott was doing DCist’s Eating In column.

This is a two-day process, but it’s definitely worth the extra time – otherwise your ribs will be too greasy. Short ribs, by the way, are incredibly not WW friendly.

If I had to do it over, I might cut the beer amount a little (maybe 1.5 bottles) and up the chicken broth – the beer taste was pretty pronounced. But not in a bad way.

I brought these to work, and then served the leftovers to John for dinner with some quick smashed potatoes – a good combo.

John’s 4 Point Rice Snack

While I had my French bread pizza, John made his yummy rice snack. A nice blend of carbohydrates and protein. Both were delicious!

4 Point French Bread Pizza

This ended up being a satisfying, post-doing-our-taxes snack.

WW Paella

We needed a slow-cooker friendly recipe for today, since we’re off to get our taxes done at 7. When I saw WW had a crock pot paella recipe, I was a little skeptical. And while this recipe could use some refining, it still made for a tasty dinner – the flavors blend nicely.

I added saffron but it’s not required. I missed the seafood and sausage, to be sure, but if you think of this more as a Spanish chicken and rice dish, it’s not so bad, hehe.

A couple notes: This called for 4 thighs/1 lb of chicken. I found 3 thighs were pretty close to a pound already so only used three. The recipe uses white rice – I used leftover brown (cooked arborio would be ideal, but then you’re not using up leftovers).

The recipe said each serving = 1.5 cups – it came out closer to 1.25 cups per serving here.

Additionally, this recipe was a little soup-y. I might cut the broth down next time, but I also drained the paella and found that also worked out ok.

Curry and Ginger Chicken Stir Fry

For some reason, this stir fry just totally hit the spot for John and me. Nothing too innovative, but the curry/ginger base and the dark meat chicken worked particularly well.

French Toast

French toast isn’t one of my favorite breakfasts, so I’ve only made it once or twice. We were in a pretty pathetic state, grocery-wise, this morning, and John’s bro had crashed, so breakfast needed to be made. This was Mike’s idea, actually, based on what little we had lying around (i.e. frozen French bread and eggs) and it actually turned out terrific!

I served this with venison sausage on the side for the guys, and berries for me to be more WW-friendly.

Moroccan-inspired carrots

When making yesterday’s Moroccan chicken, I had a pretty good idea that we were low on veggies in the fridge. I opened the crisper with the thought of scraping together a meager salad, but spotted baby carrots. I remember my old roommate’s Moroccan boyfriend made bad-ass glazed carrots. Perfect!

I checked out a few recipes online and again just ended up doing my own thing.