Family Favorites

If I were to spread these delicious meals into individual posts of their own one might think this was just a food blog.  But, I wanted to do one post on meals that our family eats on a regular basis.  This repertoire of meals comes from the last week and a half from our home to yours.  Enjoy.

This is a curry chicken.  My family really enjoys curry.  I made this dish last week on the evening of my daughter's first birthday family celebration.  I didn't have time to make my usual curry recipe, which is much more involved.  I found this recipe  here.   It 's a crock pot recipe and to be honest it was just as good as my "usual" curry, so I'll probably go with this easier recipe from now on.

When you make this, don't forget to throw on these delicious toppings.  There are so many more.  But, these four are my favorites.  Cilantro and peanuts on curry is divine, the more the better, if you ask me.

Cilanto, cranberries, peanuts and coconut.

I've been making this dish for years.  Sweet and Sour Meatballs is the name of this game.  My kids love it.  The sauce for this is interesting; a can of jellied cranberry, 1/4 c ketchup and a 1/3 c Heinz chili sauce.  Kind.of funny huh?  Well it turns out so good.  You put these ingredients in your crock pot, and the meat balls are thrown right on top.  It calls for ground beef, but I use 1 lb. ground turkey.  In the thawed turkey I mix Soy Sauce, Worcestershire, and bread crumbs.  Mix it all up with your hands and start a rollin'.   Let this cook on high for three hours or low for six.  Half way through when the meat balls have substantiated, mix them into the sauce.  Serve with rice.

The key is to get your sauce thickened.  If you've cooked it on high for three hours and you open it up and it looks soupy, the lid needs to go back on.  You'll know when it's thickened.  It will look like this, below.

Below is a favorite salad of mine, loosely based on the Thai Crunch Salad from CPK (California Pizza Kitchen.)  This is seriously one of the best salads I've ever had in my life!!!!!  I love it to pieces.   So does my daughter Gwyneth, we made it the other day for lunch.

I make it with nappa cabbage (green cabbage), purple cabbage, and greens.  Also included are peanuts, edemame, bell pepper, carrots, cilantro, cucumber, avocado, won tons and  rice sticks.  Don't skip on the won tons they give the salad a nice buttery flavor.

At the restaurant the dressing is actually two dressings.  A cilantro lime drizzle dressing and a thai peanut dressing put together.  You can find it online, it has about twenty ingredients.  No thanks.  I use this dressing as a base for any dressing that involves, well, more than this dressing below.

To get that cilantro taste I mix this dressing with cilantro paste and a tad bit of peanut butter, it's so good.

It's a beauty.

I make this soup once a week.  It's simply a chicken, vegetable and rice soup.  Most of you probably know how to make soup.  But one piece of advice...place your onion, celery, and carrots down in olive oil first to saute.  Then add your broth, water, other ingredients, etc.  I put cornbread directly into mine to let dissolve half way, so good.

We love Salmon here.  I have about a billion salmon recipes but this one is a favorite for sure.  It's Salmon with an apricot glaze.  I use my grill pan to make this.  The recipe says to grill salmon and add the glaze in the last 30 seconds.  What?  Does that even make sense?  I put the glaze on in the first moment the suckers go on the grill.  Only then do the flavors really cook in.

This is what you need to make the glaze, save one ingredient.  It calls for an apricot nectar.  Any juice you have on hand will suffice.  This time I used orange juice.  So for the glaze it's 1/4 c juice/nectar, 1/4 c apricot preserves, 1 T. Dijon mustard, 1 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar, 1 1/2 tsp honey, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper.  Get it to a boil and simmer it down to a thickened glaze.

It will look similar to this.

And just look at those grill marks.  It's perfect.  We love it.

My children have been asking for baked potatoes.  I have been making these a lot lately.  I put these with the Salmon above.  And since yams are my favorite, I baked a few of those as well.

I make this salad with dinner every night.  Unlike the more extravagant salads I make for myself at lunch this is what I call a simple dinner salad.   It usually has an apple or pear, cranberries, carrots, pecans, greens, and feta or Gorgonzola cheese.  It's topped with the vinaigrette dressing above.

Since I usually make salad twice a day I prepare ahead of time.  I wash my greens, spin them and place them in this very large container.  This lasts me about five days.

Alright, on the whole I"m not a huge baker.  But, when I do bake I can and do surprise myself sometimes.  I posted a picture of this tart earlier but it deserves one more mention.  I'm not even going to go into the recipe, it's totally involved and very tedious.  As in straining egg yolks, mixing eggs into warm liquid but not letting it curdle and so forth.

This is a Martha Stewart recipe and I hate to say it but I've tried many savory and sweet recipes from her and eight times out of ten it's a flop.  My theory is that her recipes are not tried and true.  But this one was coming from a supposed baker in New York.  Well, after looking over the recipe I could tell it would need a few added ingredients and thank goodness I listened to the "little" baker in me because it turned out fabulous!!!!!!!!

Just one more look, it's like art for Pete's Sake.

And last but not least, one of our favorite desserts.  Frozen yogurt from Yogurtland.  Which one is mine?  The simple one.  My husband likes frozen yogurt, but would much rather have ice cream.  He's a good husband though and indulges me.

Here we are on a lazy Sunday afternoon and I mean lazy.  After working all week (husband) and me cooking and working (homeschool, laundry, cleaning, driving, shopping, etc, etc.) all week, this is us relaxing.  We told our kids,  "we'll do anything you want just as long as we can do it right here sitting together.  Hence the Candy Land game on my lap and the Battle Ship game on Kirk's lap.

And.......we're out, totally.  The kids got this picture.  After this nap, there was more napping to be had...

Sunday afternoons are the best.  Mainly because I don't cook, we go to mom and dad Klippel's for Sunday dinner.  My mother in law is so sweet she says she wants to give me a break from cooking and as you can see she sure does.  There is a lot of cooking in this house and I love it.  It's one of my favorite ways to serve my family and others.

I hope you'll try some of these recipes.  They are tried and true, from me to you.