Cobb Salad

I love salads, but they rarely ever taste as good as they do in a restaurant when I make them at home.  However, my Cobb Salad is an exception.  Yes there is some effort to wash and chop and cook, but the end result is so worth it!  Especially when you line up the ingredients like I did in the picture, above.  I think my presentation is Food Network worthy.  ;o)  So here's how I built it:

• On the bottom is chopped romaine and iceberg lettuces, but you use whatever greens you prefer
• I grilled some chicken breasts in Wegmans' Basting Oil but I have also cut up ham and turkey lunchmeat from the deli into ribbons
• Hard-boiled a couple of eggs and ran them through my mini-chopper, but you can just slice if you prefer
• Diced a red onion
• Cut up an avocado
• Cut some grape tomatoes in half because, as good as they taste, the explosion that occurs when you bite into a whole one is not pretty
• Crumbled up some Feta cheese
• I ran out of room for the cooked and crumbled bacon in the salad bowl, so I served that on the side and we sprinkled it over our portions of salad on our plates.

It a one dish meal!  You can serve some bread on the side or not.  Enjoy!

TastyKitchen.com's Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes

I have drooled over this recipe since I found it on my very 1st day on Pinterest.  Scalloped Hasselback Potatoes.  What a beautiful sight to behold!  I have been wanting to make them for so long, and today I finally did it.  They were worth the wait.  I, of course, had to make adjustments to the original recipe, and have noted them, below.  Please check out the original recipe and give them a try!

I scrubbed, dried and sliced russet potatoes almost all the way through, and alternated thin slices of butter and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in the slices.  I drizzled the potatoes with Wegmans' Basting Oil, since I am allergic to olive oil, and sprinkled freshly ground pepper and sea salt on top.  I lined a sheet pan with foil and baked in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

There was so much liquid on the pan from the melting butter, that I moved them to an 8"x8" baking dish after the 40 minutes.  Then I poured heavy cream over each potato, sprinkled with cheddar cheese and put them back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Here is the hubs' potato with peas and sliced, grilled sirloin steak.  I topped my potato with sour cream.

Easiest. Best. Man Dinner. Ever.

 

The hubs is one of those people who can eat fresh tomatoes, but cooked tomatoes give him heartburn.  That makes it challenging to make dinners on a budget or make quick dinners for our family since he and I are now both working full-time but on opposite schedules.  Most budget meals involve a tomato base with various ingredients.  *sigh*  I love tomato products - tomato sauce, tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, ketchup, pizza and I make my own spaghetti sauce.  None of which, agree with the hubs' tummy.  So here is my easy-breezy, go-to meal for him that both me and B will eat.

Take a 16oz pkg of frozen meatballs and dump it in a crockpot (this fits perfectly in my 1.5 qt one.)

  

Pour a can of beef gravy over the meatballs.

Put the lid on, turn to high and set a timer for 1 hour.  That's it.

Once done, I put them in a Tupperware container for the hubs to reheat tomorrow.   He'll make rice or noodles to serve them over with a veg on the side and be in hog heaven.  I told you it was the easiest!