eatin' good in the neighborhood

after months of so much take-out and uber eats and door dash deliveries and such, i'm really loving having a fully functioning kitchen again.  and it's been fun finally getting to test out some of the fun recipes i'd been bookmarking on practically a daily basis throughout the lockdown period.  i think my family has been enjoying the fruits of my labor too, or at least i hope so.

the hub has been wanting to get back to his keto-based eating plan, so i've been trying to help by finding recipes that will work for everyone's taste buds.  like this tasty garlicky shrimp that i served with mexican-spiced cauliflower rice and green salad with a homemade ranch dressing:

and meatballs that are pumped up with lots of parmesan cheese instead of breadcrumbs served with homemade marinara:

taco tuesdays are extra fun with tortillas made of cheese.  because doesn't cheese make everything better?

a make-your-own salad bar is an easy dinner, made even more so with costco's rotisserie chicken.

and one of the hub's favorites is a shrimp and crab louie salad.  it may not be pretty, but it's pretty tasty.  heheheheh.

when it's wings night, i bust out the air fryer and make lemon pepper wings for us and buffalo ones for the old lady and her special friend.  and i learned how easy it is to make homemade blue cheese dressing, too.

perusing twitter one morning made it easy to figure out dinner for that evening.  i'd come across a post with a video on how to make a pizza cordon bleu - chicken breast stuffed with mozzarella and pepperoni and smothered with marinara sauce.  and while it wasn't necessarily as easy as it looked, it was still a hit around here.

one morning, i decided to make some spam fried rice for me and the bean for breakfast.  it's pretty easy - just dice and fry up some spam, scramble some eggs and stir fry it with cooked rice and a little soy sauce.  and i learned that i can avoid dirtying extra dishes by scrambling those eggs right in the empty spam can.  gee-nee-yus.  amirite?

and when the hub's not home for dinner, we carb it up.  oh yeah, we carb it up real good.  like this one time, when i found cheese curds at target and decided on the spot that the bean and i could have poutine that night.

one night, we were excited to have tater tot casserole for dinner because we hadn't had it in awhile.  we invited the old lady and her special friend to join us, and so i figured i'd double up the recipe.  except that i realized at the last minute that i didn't have enough tater tots...oops.  luckily, those leftover frozen french fries came to my rescue.  it looks bizarre, but they both actually liked the french fry side more than the tater tot side.  everybody wins!

i feel a little less guilty when i can serve a nice veggie on the side, so i threw together our favorite brussels sprouts salad.  lemon, bacon, sprouts - what's not to like?  even the bean ate some of it without too much grumbling.

also - chrissy teigen's spicy miso carbonara pasta.  it's amaaaaaaaazing.  well, for me and the bean it's just miso carbonara pasta because we're big wusses when it comes to spice.  either way, it's SO GOOD.  and so easy!  the old lady actually whipped this up for us for our first dinner made in this kitchen, if you remember.

and even when the hub is home, we still often have a carb-y side dish available that he just skips.  like on korean bbq night, we always have to make the rice cakes for the bean.  well, for me too.  they're deliciously chewy and go so well with the bulgogi.

and when he grills steaks for us, there's usually some sort of rice or mac & cheese on our plates while he fills his with extra salad.

this was homemade salisbury steak that turned out really delicious, with almost no carbs.

i guess i better get back to my bookmarked recipes and start figuring out dinners for this week.  i've kind of set a bar here.  and i kinda love it.