Meals from the Weekend

Friday

I thought about making Mexican and South African food, in light of the start of the World Cup, but given my lack of experience with African food, as well as a lack of plantains, I opted for Mexican. Sorry about the sideways pictures, but the food still tasted good.

Chickpeas, onion and sweet pepper simmered in tomato, cumin, cayenne pepper.

Greek Yogurt with a splash of lime juice and a dash of cayenne pepper (my replacement for sour cream)

Mashed Avocado with lime juice

Corn with diced sweet peppers and finely chopped romaine lettuce (Sorry, Mike, I ran out of cilantro)

Homemade taquitos (flour tortillas cut in half, rolled up and panfried, with shredded pork shoulder and sharp cheddar cheese)

Saturday

Weekends have tended to be my cooking overload days but I kept it easy. Used leftover chicken bones from last week's rotisserie chicken to make homemade chicken stock (more on that later). Auntie Anne's pretzel (*swoon*) and lemonade from the mall for lunch. Ordered Bangkok Bistro for dinner. Mike got his Ka Tiam Pik Thai and I got my Drunken Noodles. Yum.

Sunday

Pancakes day! I love making pancakes for breakfast. That is my one failproof recipe. I can pretty much make them by sight and I know that they will never fail me. Unfortunately, my bottle of syrup has been relocated to Mike's house and we were too lazy to walk the 2 blocks to go get it. So in 10 minutes I managed to whip up a syrup using balsamic vinegar, strawberry jam that I made from some frozen strawberries, and a couple of extra frozen strawberries in the freezer. 

I covered the bottom of a medium sauce pan with a film of balsamic vinegar and added some frozen strawberries to steam and dethaw in the reducing vinegar.When the vinegar began to bubble, I added about 4 tablespoons of the strawberry jam, and a tablespoon of white sugar. I then let that mixture come to a boil, then reduced it to a simmer for a couple of minutes, poured into a bowl and served with the pancakes. So a simple strawberry balsamic syrup was born and I forsee it showing up at the table in the near future, and not just at breakfast.

This week's menu should be up shortly.