Personal Chef

I think my parent's are happy to have me home only because I make them dinner every night. But it is a win-win for me as well because 1) I love to cook 2) I can try new recipes and 3) I don't have to buy the food! I have been home for 2 nights and we have had 2 new meals. 

Friday night we had a chicken stir-fry with rice from the rice machine (I love rice machine rice- so good!) It was one of those meals where you just find things in the fridge and throw it together and it turns out amazing.

Last night I made homemade pizza. I love pizza but homemade pizza is on another level. I had the whole family in the kitchen helping which was a lot of fun. We decided to make 2 pizzas, one with meat and one with veggies. The meat pizza had a red sauce and was topped with mozzarella, parmesan, mini pepperoni's and goat cheese.  The veggie pizza had an EVOO and garlic sauce with mozzarella, parmesan, spinach, tomatoes, black olives and feta.

Pepperoni and Goat Cheese Pizza

Spinach, Tomato and Black Olive Pizza

Everyone loved the pizza! I am hoping that instead of ordering pizza on the weekends my family might start making it more often!

Tonight we are grilling pork chops and I am roasting a variety of veggies! Yum!

Experimenting

Lately I have been experimenting in the kitchen. Figured it could be exciting to spice up what I am eating so I have been trying some new recipes, a lot of fish ones. I am not a vegetarian and do not intend on becoming one but I really have to be in the mood to eat meat. I kind of got tired of cooking the same basic shrimp/salmon/mahi recipes so I have started branching out and making at least one new recipe a week. Even though I am really busy I feel pretty accomplished after cooking a new meal, especially if it is really delicious.

Because I am so busy and I generally am cooking for only myself or one other person I like to keep the recipes pretty simple. I also normally try to cook simpler recipes because I am not a fan of buying a ton of ingredients I won't use often. My favorite website to use is kraftfoods.com. I like Kraft products and I generally always buy them so that is the main reason I like the site. I also like the site because the recipes are very simple and I haven't had a bad one yet.

Last week I made a Glazed Mahi- So delicious!!!! Since it turned out so good I figured I would share the recipe.

The ingredients for the glazed fish are:

• 3 tablespoons honey
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger root
• 1 clove garlic, crushed or to taste
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 4 (6 ounce) mahi mahi fillets
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

I did not add the ginger root and it was still good. I also only used 1 tablespoon of each ingredient because I was only glazing one fish. You can find the full recipe here.

Since I have been trying to find new recipes I was thinking that maybe once a week we could all share a recipe that we made during the week. Thoughts?

Tonight I am making a black bean chili and tomorrow I am planning on making a parmesan baked salmon. Happy cooking everyone!