An Instant Classic

Oh, what a day! I slept in, worked out, and spent some quality time at the pool. But when I got back from the pool, I needed to make some lunch. My options were: 1) make a PB&J, eat quickly, not so filling, etc. or option #2:  cook up something. Think you can guess which one I chose?

If you guessed right, you're still reading this post - because yes, I did decide to whip something up. And once I decided that I wanted to make something, my mind took off trying to figure out what I could make. Here's how my thought process working:
"Hmmmm, what sounds good?" (as I open the fridge and pantry). I spot an already opened box of jumbo shells that I had used earlier in the week (which reminds me, I will be posting that meal shortly - I just got excited about this meal so I'm posting it first). "Alright, this is good, but what do I pair it with?" I don't want to open an entire jar of marinara sauce, so I look through my fridge and found pesto! But I only have so much left and don't want to use it all on this meal...hmm "how do I make a creamy pesto?". Looked that up and realized I had most of the necessary ingredients so that will work.

So after doing this type of thinking for 7 minutes, I had an idea of what I was going to do: Egg and cheese stuffed shells covered in pesto! Let's do this!

Sneak peak of the end results

1. Boil water in a saucepa, big enough to fit all of your jumbo shells, and once it boils, add in your shells
2. Time to make the pesto sauce
• Oh yeah, I totally decided to ab-lib this. I used pesto, butter, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, and minced garlic - basically everything I had in my fridge.
• I realized early on that I didn't want to make a ton of sauce, so I added two spoonfuls of pesto, a bit of butter, cut off some cream cheese and dumped that it, shook out some parmesan cheese, and knocked in some minced garlic.
• Yeah, that's how I did it - sorry if you're trying to follow this post and make it exactly like I did. If you want to make it how I did, don't bother taking out a measure cup - just bring along your tastebuds and go for it!
3. Scrambled three eggs with a little salt and pepper
4. Cut up some small cubes of cheese (I used havarti with dill, a personal favorite)
5. When the pasta is fully cooked, (typically 10-12 minutes because the shells are bigger, some would even call them "jumbo"...yes, it's ok to laugh at my bad jokes), drain the water out.
6. Stuff your shells
• Grab a shell, add a small spoonful of eggs, a cube or two of cheese and put on your plate
• Repeat until your plate is sufficiently filled to your liking
• Take a small spoonful of pesto and lay out on top of each shells, not completely covering the shell but proportionally just enough (that's how I thought when I put spread on top, I don't know).
• To add a little garnish and color on top, sprinkle red pepper flakes on top of the pesto.
• I thought of red pepper because it's something I would add to pasta and also to eggs, so of course it would work for this dish
7. Take a picture and dig in! (This is funny, because this is what I do every time before I eat now, so that I have photo evidence for my posts)

Wow that looks good! Oh wait, I got to eat that.

Here's too a little Saturday afternoon creativity!

This One's for the People - Part 1

I like to think I'm a man of the people, so you must give the people what they want. Which means that I will be posting recipes on the top two selected dishes from my last post's vote (does that even make sense)/?

So here we go:

BEWARE: Prepare to have your mind NOT blown away!

Ingredients:

• Deli meat of your choosing
• They serve Boar's Head meat at my local deli so I splurge every now and then and get it.
• On this particular sandwich, I have the maple turkey breast and some chipotle chicken breast (it was on sale, definitely a bargain)
• A slice of cheese (you can put two on if you're really feeling your oats)
• Oh yeah, you get to choose the cheese. I went with swiss.
• Two pickles
• Kraft Sun-Dried Tomato Salad Dressing
• Alright so here's a little secret. I don't like mayo or mustard on my sandwich but at the same time, who likes a dry deli sandwich? Ketchup could only get me through my early years but I've evolved my tastes. Yes it's a salad dressing, but it's delicious. And because I don't always like a cut tomato on my sandwich, this still gives it a similar enough flavor...or at least I've convinced myself it does
• Butter
• Two slices of sandwich bread
• I kind of feeling silly putting this because you're making a sandwich, so of course there's bread, right?

Directions:

1. Make a sandwich with the above ingredients (You got this!)
2. Pretend the sandwich you've just made is actually a grilled cheese and proceed to step 3
3. Butter one side of your "Grilled Cheese" and cook in a pan on the stove for about one minute (or until bread gets that perfect grilled cheese color on it...if you don't know what that is, then maybe look it up?)
4. Before you flip the sandwich over, make sure the side that has not been cooking is sufficiently buttered
5. Flip sandwich and cook until you get that same color (about 1 minute)
6. Cut in half and eat it!

Recap:

Alright, by now you might feel overwhelmed by this post and feel like you're missing something. Well, you're not. All I did was make a regular sandwich...but then I realized how great it would be if my bread were toasted and I didn't want to pull apart my sandwich just for the bread. So I decided to butter 'er up and cooked it like a grilled cheese...if you still think my directions involved you making a grilled cheese, I'm sorry, but ti was simply a reference to the process of buttering the bread and cooking in a pan.

--

It was simply enough, however there was enough of a flair that the sandwich had a little more deliciousness to it!  

P.S. This is a what a grilled cheese looks like

Pick your favorite!

Alright, my posts have slowed up substantially, but my cooking has not. And because things have changed, so will this post. Instead of me writing out the entire recipe for my last meal, I want you to tell me what meal you'd like me to write the recipe for!!

Below you'll find a bunch of pictures for recent meals, so tell me which one you want to see more of by posting a comment below!

A

B

C

D

E

F

Steak Sundays!

Hello all, back at it again with tonight's meal. I was flipping through my fridge and freezer and decided that I want steak...it is decided! I put it on the counter and watched it thaw. Ok I didn't actually pull up a chair and stare at the steak thawing, but I did make sure to pull out the steak early enough in the day so that it was good to go when I was ready. Alright time to cook:

I actually followed my previous steak cooking process from one of my first posts, which you can conveniently find by clicking here. I really don't want to just copy and paste that post, although I'm quite tempted. So instead I'll just give some highlights and you can check out the old post for specifics.

• I again used garlic powder, salt, and pepper to season my steak and found it do be oh-so-delicious. Now let me give you some background: I'm a big A1 steak sauce guy and use a considerable amount when eating steak. Well, with this steak tonight, no steak sauce was used! And maybe because I actually don't have an A1 in my fridge, but we'll chalk this one up on account of the steak being so flavorful.
• I cooked the steak in the oven on high broil (I have no idea how hot that actually is), flipped it every 5 minutes for the first 15 minutes and then continually checked the steak to get it as well as I wanted it.
• I'm thinking "Steak Sundays" could actually turn into a thing. It's a great way to get the week ahead going, and going in the right direction. Check back for more details to see if this actually happens.
• I didn't have just steak tonight. I also whipped up some hash brown potatoes which are quite easy to make. Throw some olive or vegetable oil in a pan, dumped the potatoes in, flip a couple of times and cook until golden brown. Also try following the directions on the package, that usually works too.
• Also made some broccoli. Put some in a bowl, added a little water and salt, and cooked in the microwave for 3 minutes. Pretty simple way to cook some broccoli and get that much need green in your meal.

That's all, folks! (P.S. Happy belated birthday to America!)