Chicken Taco Salad

Growing up this was how we always made taco salad. I was in college before I found out that most people don't use thousand island dressing when making taco salad. For me this is the only way to make it and even though I have tried the traditional sour cream and salsa, it doesn't taste right without thousand island.

This is also a great way to use the roasted chicken from the freezer.

Cheers,
Katie

Meal from the freezer.

With the move in less than 2 weeks we are cleaning out our freezer. I had one bag left of the Bolognese sauce I made from Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy cook book. Lidia Bastianich is one of my favorite cooks. A few months ago I made a big pot of her Bolognese sauce. I measured out 1 and a half cup increments into plastic baggies and placed them in the freezer. That way I could have pasta with Bolognese sauce anytime and not have to cook it all day.

I made a little more pasta than I had sauce for so I just added about a cup from a jar of sauce we had in the pantry. I mixed the pasta, sauce and some parmigiana and baked it for 10 minutes at 350. This gave me time to finish up the salad and heat up some Texas toast. It was so good.

Bolognese sauce can be made in a shorter amount of time. It is totally worth it though to take your time and make a big pot that cooks all day. I will definitely make another batch after we move into our new house.

Cheers
Katie

Lunch and Dinner out?!?!

Last night I took Alexandra to a birthday party at Pump It Up in Raleigh. She had a great time and I was very impressed how smoothly everything was handled with maybe 20 kids running around between the ages of less then a year to maybe 6 years old. I think there were 3 parties going on at once and you never would have known it.

The party went to 6:45. Since VJ and I had trivia at Carolina Ale House, so we decided to eat there. This was decided before we figured out I would need to go pick up the wardrobe boxes. Our movers are located right by VJ's office so we all went out to lunch at Shane's Rib Shack. Shane's had really good BBQ and their sauce was really good. It was a tomato base sauce that wasn't to tangy. I highly recommend trying Shane's.

Cheers
Katie

Cinco DiMizio part two

We have some left over ground beef and taco shells from our Cinco DiMizio party so we are having leftovers tonight. I'm not sure if Alexandra is going to be up for it but a quick quesadilla can fix a fussy eater. I would enjoy a Mexican beer but I have ballet class tonight and a bloated ballerina isn't fun for anyone.

Tacos were great. I started to just use chili powder, cumin, salt and pepper to season the beef and chicken. It's pretty good. I had forgotten to pick up some more shredded cheese so I took two sticks of string cheese and made my own:). It worked out. One of my new favorite toppings are sautéed onions and bell peppers. I cook everything in the same skillet after the ground beef so that they can all have the same seasoning. Next time I think I'll mix in some diced jalapeño peppers for a little kick.

Alexandra shocked us by eating her quesadilla and half of the diced tomatoes. Last night we couldn't get her to touch her food. Ahh the joys of parenting.

Cheers,
Katie

Two weeks till moving week

Wow it has been forever since I wrote on my blog. Well we move in 17 days. So two weeks from today is moving week. I already know moving week will consists of lots of take out meals. We are right now working on operation clean out the fridge and pantry. This makes it hard to come up with meal plans that provide a verity of different dishes. Oh well just two weeks to go then I'll be in my new kitchen and be able cook something different every night:).

For now I'm going back to a favorite. Hot pepper jelly shrimp. It's from Now Eat This by Rocco DiSpirito. It's really good and not too hot. I like to serve it with rice and either broccoli or green beans. Asparagus would be really good too.

Dinner was just as good as always . I enjoyed it with a Chardonnay. Alexandra normally enjoys this meal but tonight didn't want anything todo with it. She would much rather play outside.

Cheers
Katie