Adventures in cooking (and food in general)

The hubby and I have been all over the place cooking-wise. When it was super hot, I refused to make anything that had to be made in the oven or in multiple pots on the stove, which made meal planning challenging. We've been doing a combination of our usual meals (tacos, stir-frys, pizza and salad) and adding in a few German meals like curry wurst and schnitzel. The grocery store has an entire aisle of seasoning packets, which makes it really convenient to just pickup a packet, pickup your meat, and any other ingredients needed. With the schnitzels, it's usually cream but we cut back on the portion sizes and I make a veggie.

When we go out for schnitzel, unfortunately the size is far too large... this Gorgonzola schnitzel is the size of your face which I can't finish (but hubby does and practically licks his plate clean):

Gosh those fries are good. Germans do potatoes so well.

Last week we had pepper cream chicken schnitzel with roasted carrots. The entire meal could be prepared in the oven so I was excited to try out two of the oven dishes we got as wedding presents. Carrots have been my go-to veggie as of late since they're cheap and can just be tossed in olive oil and seasonings and thrown in the oven. They also make an easy snack for hubby with some hummus or ranch dressing.

One item I keep going back to at the grocery store are mini turkey meatballs. Very flexible - we'll use them for our spaghetti and meatballs, eat them as-is with bbq sauce, or even add them to pizza.

I'm definitely looking forward to cooler weather so I can up the ante with some cold weather soups, chilis, stews, and baked goods. Pinterest is going to come in handy and my pins will be put to good use - I vow to not just pin things but also MAKE the recipes I pin! I'm particularly intrigued by these Candied Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Speaking of cookies, two weeks ago hubby had a craving so we walked over to the grocery store for the ingredients. The cookies were oatmeal chocolate chip but we had trouble finding chocolate chips... hubby was fine getting a bar of baking chocolate and cutting it up. They came out pretty delicious, even better as we made them a few days later from frozen balls:

Up in the next month or so: Oreo cheesecake bars, black bean & brown rice burgers, veggie mac and cheese, and oatmeal applesauce muffins.