Chicken Piccata

Conversation with my sister and I:
"What do you want for dinner?" - me
"I dunno... I have to leave soon to go to a friends so..." - sister
"Ugh... what am I going to have for dinner then?!" - me
"Wanna just bang out some chicken piccata right now?" - sister
"Ya, cool.. sounds good." - me

Casual night at the Parkes house hold. Chicken piccata is delicious and very easy to make! All we did differently was added some white wine and garlic to the sauce... because obviously, why not? We also made up all the measurements... added a little extra lemon here, some more wine there etc.

We served it with plain spaghetti noodle and spinach.

Moroccan Chicken and Quinoa

I had no idea what moroccan chicken tasted like when I went to make it, but thought I'd give it a whirl because I had the ingredients! I adjusted the recipe for my desired portion size and stupidly put in an entire teaspoon of cayenne when it called for 1/4 of a tsp... so it was a little hot... and by a little I mean pretty spicy. It was still delish and I still ate it... go me!

Frittata

I don't remember when this breakfast was from, last weekend maybe, but my sister and I made a frittata for breakfast. It had mushrooms, onions, artichokes, peppers, garlic spinach, tomato, left over potato with some fresh parmesan cheese and of course egg. It was very good, but we both agreed it needed something else (which is surprising because of everything that was in it). Our vote was for a little hollandaise sauce, but we were too lazy to make it. 

New York City

I've been an awful blogger. I've had this saved as an unfinished draft for quite some time.

I went to New York for a week with my friend Hailey. I'm so glad Hailey appreciates food like I do. New York has some great food! Our original plan was to go to as many of the 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives' places and 'best thing I ever ate places' as we could, but it turned out to be hard to find a place in a convenient location to what we were doing.  The first night we to dinner near her parents apartment - the food was really good. We got an array of dishes and shared them among us. We got brick chicken, large meat ball, lamb slidders, fish tacos, gucamole, and a watermelon salad.

On one of our outings Hailey and I went to Lombardi's pizzeria - the first pizzeria in America. We ordered a large because we wanted left overs, we could have had left overs with a small! It was huge. We got sweet italian sausage and garlic spinach. 

We made a stop at Molly's cupcakes, which was the winner of cup cake wars at one point. The cupcakes were so good. They were SO moist. I got a cookie dough one and Hailey got a rocky road cup cake. We were so excited by all the flavour option we didn't realize until we were eating our cupcakes that we could have made a custom built one!

We went to Dylan's Candy Bar and shared a mint chocolate milkshake and a cheese cake sundae... it had an entire piece of cheese cake put on top. I was in heaven.

I almost forgot about this one until I found the photo. Hailey's mom was watching the food network one day while we were out and saw a show about sandwiches. The show had some famous chef come and he made croque monsieurs. This chef's restaurant was located conveniently close to Hailey's house so we went. I'd never had one before, but what is not to love? French bread, french ham, gruyere cheese and béchamel sauce? That's my kind of sandwich. We both loved it and Hailey who had spent an entire summer living in Paris said it was on par with the good croque monsieurs she had had there!

Porkchops in a Mushroom Cream Sauce

    I love it when the person I cook dinner for just starts washing the dishes. At home I grew up with the motto "She/He who cooks doesn't clean", so when I'm cooking dinner for myself I'm always waiting for someone to do my dishes, but I'm stuck doing them!
    Tonight I was talking out loud about how to cook my pork chop and my housemate pulled out a can of mushroom soup from her cupboard that had a recipe for pork chops. It was very simple and rather boring, but she said I could use it so I invited her to join me for dinner! Instead of following the instructions which were "Brown pork chop, set aside. Sauté onions, mushrooms and garlic in same pan. Add cream of mushroom soup and milk. Add pork chop back", I worked off them. I put salt, pepper and lemon juice on the pork chops and then browned them and set them aside. Added mushrooms and onion, sautéed for a bit, added garlic and a splash of sherry, then broccoli and fresh tarragon. Stirred that for a bit and then added the cream of mushroom soup and some water. Then I added some dry thyme, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper and lemon to taste. As Campbell's says it was "MM, MM, Good!"

Stuffed Chicken and French Onion Soup

Well I may be screwing myself over for my exam on Friday, but cooking is WAY more fun than studying. French onion soup: I'll admit, the french onion soup is store bought. They come in little individualized sized portions and you bake them. It was at 425 for 40 minutes. The soup was alright, obviously not restaurant good because it was frozen... but edible!
Stuffed chicken: Butterfly the chicken. Fry some mushrooms and spinach in some butter until soft. Put the roasted garlic in the chicken, then the mushrooms and spinach, then slices of gruyere cheese. Close the chicken and pin it so it doesn't pop open in the oven. If you want to bread it, as I did, mix some Panko bread crumbs, fresh thyme and s&p and put it on top. Bake at 425 for 20 minutes. The chicken was mmmmmm mmmm good.

Spicy Sausage and Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

My housemate facebook'd me today and told me she was going to try and make these. They looked delicious so I told her I wanted to join. I've never previously had much luck with stuffed peppers because they haven't been flavourful enough, but these were great!

We didn't have zucchini, so for the vegetables we used asparagus and mushrooms. Also added waaaay more parmesan than necessary. It was delicious.