Micah and Christine

July 6, 2011 by Christine

This has been a good week. It feels good to be home. I started my summer class, Charlotte's back in school, and Micah's back to work. We have almost regained control of our living room. I have also enjoyed some quality time in the kitchen, sticking surprisingly close to my original meal plans. So without further ado, here is how this week's meals turned out!

ELT's
Egg salad sandwiches, the fresh and flavorful way!

I really enjoyed these, and I can thank the egg salad for that. I am not a big fan of mayonnaise, so I wanted an egg salad recipe without much. I adapted this recipe and was really pleased with the results.

Egg salad recipe:

In a medium bowl, add 1 teaspoon paprika, 2 tablespoons mayo, 1 candy red onion diced, 2 tablespoons dijon, and 1 tablespoon fresh dill. Boil 10 eggs, dice them, and add them to the other ingredients. Stir. Yum.

Serve on wheat toast with sliced tomato and lettuce.

Lemon Blueberry Pancakes

The recipe that made my husband declare they were the best pancakes he had ever eaten.

I always hesitate to change a Pioneer Woman recipe, but I did so out of necessity this time. I didn't have enough evaporated milk, so I used up stuff from my fridge: 1/2 cup evaporated milk, 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup whole milk. Also, I didn't have quite enough blueberries, which worked out nicely so that I could make plain-lemon smiley-face pancakes for the kiddo.

~~Penne~~ Macaroni with ~~Pea~~ String Bean Pesto

An easy recipe that was on the table in just under a half hour.

I started with this recipe, but realized after a while that I had string beans rather than peas from the farmer's market. Oops! They look similar, right? Anyway, I just boiled the string beans, cut off the vine-y corners, and tossed it all in the food processor for the pesto. This turned out really well, and you can't beat how easy it was.

Beer Can Chicken with Avocado and Grilled Corn Salad and Refrigerator Pickles

This meal just felt like SUMMER to me.

I'm so glad we tried the beer can chicken. I'm always a little intimidated by cooking meat when it so closely resembles the animal itself, but I went to the recipe and it was surprisingly easy. I also made my own chicken spice rub, adapted from this recipe. So the chicken happily sat up like this inside our grill until it was ready to come out and be devoured by us. The skin was a little crispy, but the meat was juicy and delicious.

I also made some refrigerator pickles earlier in the week. (Picture here) We were supposed to wait four days to eat them, so it was exciting when we were finally able to try them. I made pickles both from lemon squash and little cucumbers, and both were pretty tasty.

Finally, I really loved the corn-avocado salad. The avocado lent a really nice creamy-(healthy)-fatty flavor to the other veggies. It tasted so fresh! I made a half recipe and I think it would have been plenty to feed 4-6 as a side dish. I stayed close to the original recipe, but skipped the cucumber and the cilantro.

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I think that's all I have to share for now! In the near future you can look forward to some vacation posts and more meal planning.