Heirloom Tomato Salad

This was a Cooking Light recipe (though I only had regular heirlooms rather than cherry ones). Note: fat free feta is gross. The recipe called for reduced fat, and the store had fat free and full fat. I’d take the extra calories any day; the texture seemed really off. Served this with the make-your-own-pasta and grilled bread.

Splended Table’s Make-Your-Own Pasta w/ Broccoli

I made this for Mike & Paige’s visit yesterday. It was inspired by the fact that on The Splendid Table, the host was talking about how she went to a chef’s house for dinner and he just did the below make-your-own-pasta thing and how it was so lovely. The chicken is my addition and definitely not a requirement, particularly if you want to go meatless. In the future I would do spaghetti rather than bucatini – because of its hollow nature, it was kinda crying out for some kind of sauce.

Maria & Tami’s Cheesy Rice w/ Veggies

Maria and Tami were over Saturday and we were talking about easy summer meals that use a lot of veggies. They mentioned this one as a favorite, and despite the fact I knew it wasn’t so healthy, I knew I wanted to make it. It actually ended up being less WW points than expected. Essentially a stove-top casserole.

Easy to make vegetarian if you omit the (small amount) of chicken and use a different rice flavor. And you could easily make it more healthy if you didn’t use the flavored rice with all the sodium – that just happens to be one of John’s and my processed food guilty pleasures, so we were all about making it for a treat.

Drunken Clams

This recipe has double meaning. Yes, there is wine in the recipe. But I was also pretty tipsy when I made this for Dena. Which resulted in such recipe fun as accidentally grabbing red wine instead of white, ending up with a mysteriously grey sauce, etc. I had meant to make mussels this way, but Whole Foods was out of them. All things considered, they were still very tasty.

John Makes Patatas Bravas

John has been “threatening” to make patatas bravas since we got back from Spain. For lunch today, he did! He used Jose’s recipe, which I’m just going to link to here. He served this with mini-baguette sandwiches with grilled chicken, avocado, tomato and some of the leftover aoli, and tomato and avocado bread. YUM.

Recipe Variation: Pepper Steak

Pepper steak is a dish leftover from childhood, and I’ve never tinkered much with the recipe since I think of it as comfort food. But I somehow ended up making like, the best pepper steak ever last night. I think it had a lot less to do with my slight recipe tweaks, and much more with the really great produce involved – a number of varieties of garden pepper, an heirloom tomato, etc. YUM.

Superfast Chicken Posole

I’ve always liked the idea, but never really gotten into the practice of buying a rotisserie chicken for convenience sake. Mostly because I really love roasting chicken, even if it isn’t an easy process that I’ve totally mastered. But when I saw this Cooking Light recipe (and yes, I’m on a CL kick due to my returned WW-vigilance) , I figured it seemed like a much better option than cranking up my oven for who knows how long. Plus, I love posole and wanted to give this recipe a test run before my tomatillos take off next month (fingers crossed). And now I have extra chicken meat to play with, a carcass with which I made stock last night in the crock pot, etc. Side note: Anyone have any ideas for what to do with half a can of leftover hominy?

Grilled Rockfish with Tomato Bacon Butter

It’s been awhile since fish night! This was a good comeback recipe. The recipe called for mahimahi but the store didn’t have any, so I went with rockfish instead. A rich-tasting dish that’s surprisingly WW-friendly.

Honey-Wine Braised Chicken Thighs w/ Mustard Greens

I love love love loved this recipe. Wish I could share the photo, too, as it looked pretty, but it appears my Droid SD card is malfunctioning (along with my phone’s speaker; good thing I’m getting a new one later this week). Great way to use up greens, and a great sweet savory combo for a dish. I braised this on the stove: the recipe recommends doing so in an oven, but I couldn’t justify turning mine on in this heat. Turned out just fine.

White Bean Salad with tomato and cucumber

I came home from my run craving protein and produce. This combined both, letting me use up some of the awesome veggies I have stocked up right now (tomato from my garden, cuke from CSA).