Dinner for a month - Week 4

1/23 Poultry Pasta Primavera - This was a passable dish. The flavor was decent, but the best part was the vegetables. We had a great red pepper and some very nice broccoli that really made the dish work. I wish I had taken a picture of it, because it was one of the most attractive dishes I made this month.

1/24 Dressed up Lima Beans - James hates lima beans, but the recipe noted that some of the most admit lima bean haters had changed their minds after eating them "dressed up." James must be the exception to this; he noted that they were "Meh." I thought they were OK, but I think I'm a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to lima beans - just slather them with butter and a dash of salt and its good to go.

1/25 Dinner at church

1/26 Cauliflower-broccoli pizza crust - This is a "must make" for anyone who has seen the recipe on pinterest. I changed it just a bit by adding a bit of broccoli and it was really enjoyable. Don't expect to pick up a piece of the pizza and eat it like normal; this is a crust that needs a fork. However, the flavor makes up for the eating style. ( I firmly believe that pizza was meant to be eating with one's hands...perhaps that it why I enjoy a thin crust and not deep dish.)

1/27 Dinner out

1/28 Bake apples - I used another recipe off pinterest for this one at Tiffany's request. It was a bit labor intensive, but other than that it was an extremely easy recipe. The flavor was good, but I think I would like more crust than just the little lattice top (which I found quite a challenge to make). James would say I need to practice this a bit...perhaps because he always wants me to make more pies.

1/29 Seasame Scallion dressing - A nice dressing for salad, but different salad items would be a good idea than the ones we used. I threw a tossed salad together, but it didn't pair as nicely with the dressing as well as I would have liked. I might try this dressing as a marinade for grilled chicken sometime.

1/30 Spicy Cajun Shrimp and Apple Tarts - The shrimp (or "shrimps" as Mom would say) had a great flavor - just enough spice with a splash of buttery lemon. We served it with rice, but the recipe recommended it with crusty french bread for cleaning up the sauce. This would be something fun to serve for a big summer family gathering. The apple tarts were just thrown together to use up some apple mash (which I made to extract the juice from an apple for the seasame scallion dressing the day before) and a little leftover pie crust. They were fine, but I didn't bother to write down what I had done.

1/31 Spicy honey glazed chicken - This recipe would be ideal of grilling, but we used the griddle on the stove (with great results). My only complaint was that the sauce never truly carmelized, which would definitely happen on our grill. It starts with a great rub, and is followed with a honey-vinegar glaze. The author of the recipe noted that leftovers of this make a great chicken salad the following day. James said this was his favorite recipe from the this month.

For February the challenge has changed - instead of cooking, it's cleaning. My goal is to clean one thing at home each day. This could be one drawer, one room, or one set of laundry or dishes. I have a tendency to put cleaning off until the weekend and then find a good chunk of my weekend taken up by cleaning; so I thought I'd see if the Danny Tanner method (I seem to remember that Full House character cleaning something every day) would work for me.