Watermelon & Feta salad

This is a very simple recipe with an elaborate pay off.   5 ingredients and I used S&P.

Nugget Potato Salad

I absolutely LOVE potato salad but it doesn't love me or my figure.  I rarely eat or make it these days.  However, when new baby nugget taters are in season, I will indulge in spuds more frequently.

Roast Chicken with Bread and Arugula Salad

I saw Ina Garten do this recipe on a "Chew" repeat show last week and I knew I had to make it.  I went out and bought a 3 & 1/2 lb chicken first chance I got.  I got mine at IGA for $9.  However, I wasn't thinking because the oven had to be so high and it was a really hot week outside!  My house would heat up like an inferno and I have no A/C.

Anchovy Tuna Spaghettini

My co-worker friend gave me this recipe quite some time ago and it's really delicious.  She said it was from her Italian friend's family and passed down, though her friend modified it to add the green onions and parsley.  I modified it too, to add crushed red chilies.

Pork Loin Roast with Marsala sauce

I got a great deal on this roast at "No Frills" supermarket.  Below is the roast cut in half and the whole thing cost me $10.00.  The other half went in the freezer for another time.

California Roll Salad

My son really only eats California rolls as his sushi.  I  have slowly been trying to expand his horizon in this food area - so now he eats deep fried California rolls too.  :)  However, unless pressed to try something different he likes this roll most and that is that.  Except he could do without the cucumber.  I decided to make a salad out of it, sans the cuke, of course...well, for his anyway, mine would have some.  I LOVE cucumber.  I thought of this on my own, but discovered I certainly wasn't the first, as there was lots of recipes out there for it on the Interweb.  I'm not the hugest fan of "deconstructed" food, but this did seem like an easy way to enjoy sushi without all the work of rolling it, which I've never done.  I don't have the sushi tools for rolling it either.

Pancit Shanghai

My Filipino co-worker has brought this noodle dish in for me a couple of times at work, and I thought it was soooo delicious and comforting.  She said she learned it from her mom and I asked her for the recipe and decided to give it a try.  This required a trip to T&T Supermarket for all things Asian.  I doubled the recipe too as she said this recipe was enough for her and her husband.  I wanted leftovers of it.  Here are her ingredients:

Deep Dish Pizza in a Cast Iron Pan

Yes, lately, I've been a little obsessed about my cast iron pan.  My dad swore by his and I grew up watching him cook everything in it except acidic foods.  I had one for 20 years that was so seasoned, like my dad's, you could fry eggs on it and they slid out like they were on teflon.  My son left mine on a burner he was heating when he was young(er) and forgot it for hours.  Thankfully, it never burnt the house down, but the bottom fell out!!!  I was so devastated, I had to buy a new one (Lodge) and it's taken me over 5 years to get it seasoned properly.  It might even be 10 years, I can't remember when that happened now...Cast irons take time to "perfect" - depending how much you use them, but when they get there, nothing is better...you could 'google' for days and read about the glorious meaning they have to cooks - if that interested you, of course.  ;)

Nicoise Salad

I adore Nicoise salads.  I think mostly because of the haricot vert (green beans).  I love tuna too.  It's impossible to find good tuna canned in olive oil these days, at least where I shop.  I miss that.  Ahi tuna was available at IGA so I bought a piece of it and decided to sear it tonight.  I looked at a lot of different recipes, and in the end, just used the usual ingredients and made a vinaigrette.   I made the hard boiled eggs, green beans and dressing the night before.  For the dressing I used:

Grillades & Grits

Sunday dinner seemed like a good night for cheesy stone-ground grits!  I looked around for recipes and found this one so I based what I did on hers, but did it 'my way' as hers seemed a little more complicated than necessary.  :)  I had "Triple-A Inside Round" steak in the fridge because I was going to make chicken-fried steak with it but since I made sausage gravy yesterday, I wasn't craving the milk gravy again.

Sausage with Biscuits & Gravy

Saturday morning breakfast.  I've never made this before.  This long weekend was going to be about comfort food and new recipes it seemed.  All the recipes I looked at were pretty similar - which is, you fry some sausage, add some flour and then some milk.  So, I decided to make mine spicy.  I bought some Johnsonville hot Italian ground sausage.  I really wanted the breakfast sausage but it was sold out, so I didn't have a choice.  For the biscuits, I cheated and used Pillsbury country biscuit dough.

Santorini Tomato Fritters

I'm talking about Greece again. When I was in Santorini I ordered their speciality  of "tomato balls or fritters" every restaurant I went to that had them.  I would always have leftovers and eat them for breakfast.  I took a cooking class and we made them there too.  I can't find fresh spearmint here (dried, I can) so I asked my friend who visits farmer's markets often to keep her eye out for me.  She actually bought an herb plant of it and grew me some.  She brought some into work for me, so I decided it was time to make these.  Below are four pictures from Santorini.  The first picture of the dip is the one I wanted to try to recreate this evening to go with my fritters.  I'll get to that later.