What's for supper? Pasta Salad and (surprise!) Something from the barbecue

Tonight's dinner menu:

Primavera Pasta Salad

Barbecued Sausage on Buns

How do you barbecue sausages in a highrise apartment building?

Weĺl, in this case, you take the elevator down, walk out the back of the building, and there are picnic tables and propane barbecues, free to use.  When Mr. Fixit went to do the sausage, he was the only person there. Imagine that on a holiday weekend. Maybe it's too cold, or everybody's camping or at the cottage.

Mama Squirrel made a pasta salad to go with the sausages. It was an easier version of a recipe in Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely; easier mostly because I used frozen vegetables and only had to dirty one pot. The trick is not to let either the pasta or the vegetables get mushy.

Pasta Salad, Squirrel Version

Ingredients:

1 package Green Giant Valley Selections Stir Fry Medley

3 small handfuls pasta bowties

1 can corn, drained

3 tbsp. olive oil

A little cider vinegar (the recipe didn't call for any, but it seemed to need it)

1/2 tbsp. basil

A bit of minced, jarred garlic

Salt and pepper to taste

Some shredded cheese, Italian type preferred

In a serving bowl, mix the dressing ingredients and add the drained corn. Boil a large pot of water and start cooking the pasta; after about six minutes, add the package of vegetables, bring the water back to a boil, and cook just a few minutes more. The pasta should still be slightly chewy. Drain well in a colander. Mix with corn and dressing.  Sprinkle with cheese (if it seems too hot, wait until it has chilled a bit, you don't want the cheese to melt). Chill until ready to eat.

What's for supper? Roast Beef Ratatouille

Isn't it funny when you can go back five years on your blog and find that you had almost the same fresh and leftover ingredients to use for supper?

Well, okay, not everyone can do that, but I got lucky with the leftovers. We might even have some cherry tomatoes in the garden.

What's for supper? How could we be out of pasta?

Well, we weren't entirely out of pasta. We did have elbow macaroni and a few lasagna noodles. I have been allowing certain stockpiled things to get way down there before buying more, and pasta was one of them.

So tonight's dinner was Chicken with Lasagna Noodles. And Peas, and Toaster-Oven Brownies.

Recipe: Brown some cut-up boneless chicken breasts in a large skillet. Add thinned pasta sauce, bring to a boil, and add broken-up lasagna noodles. Let simmer until almost done, stirring occasionally, then add some cheese (your choice what kind). You can turn it off a few minutes before serving, to let it all come together

That's all!

What's for supper? Pasta night

Tonight's dinner menu:

Salad from the garden

Rigatoni with a sauce made from ground chicken, peppers, leftover diced tomatoes, a little can of pizza sauce, and extra seasonings.

What's for supper? Silly Pasta

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pasta with meat sauce. The pasta is a combination of broken spaghetti, penne, and ditali (mini rings).  Because I didn't have enough of any one thing except for elbows, and elbows are kind of boring.

Raw veggies.

Chocolate chip cookies.

What's for supper? Creamy Ziti with spinach and ham

Tonight's dinner menu:

Creamy Ziti, from Saving Dinner. We even have the frozen spinach and ham she calls for. Serendipity.

What's for supper? Chicken cacciatore

I know, too much slow cooker this week, but I wasn't sure when I'd be home to cook today.

So we are having:

Slow cooker Chicken Cacciatore
Pasta
Cheese
Carrot sticks

Stovetop blueberry crisp.

What's for supper? Chicken vegetable pasta, and options

Tonight's dinner menu:

Chicken-vegetable sauce, or just vegetable sauce
Pennine

Pita crisps (made in the oven)

Sweet potato hummus

Apples, bananas, oranges

What's for supper? Pasta night

 Tonight's dinner menu:

Pasta with choice of meat in the sauce or just chopped peppers
Green beans
Bread-machine garlic bread

Watermelon! (Take that, winter.)

What's for supper? Use up your noodles

Tonight's dinner menu:

Pasta and sauce, meat optional
Raw vegetables
Garlic bread, made from homemade whole wheat bread, melted butter, garlic powder, chopped parsley

Ice cream

Tonight's Pasta Recipe:

Part of a package of noodles; part of a package of whole grain spirals
One can pasta sauce, a bit of leftover tomato paste
Chopped mushrooms, yellow peppers, and grape tomatoes
Olive oil for the skillet
1 pound ground beef
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Warm a spoonful of olive oil in a large skillet. Add chopped vegetables and tomatoes, and simmer a few minutes.  In another pan, brown and drain a pound of ground beef.  Add half the can of pasta sauce to each pan, and some tomato paste to the vegetable pan.  Simmer while you cook a potful of mixed pasta and noodles because you forgot to buy spaghetti.  Let everyone mix and match sauces as they want.

What's for supper? Pasta bake

What's in the oven?

Carnivorous pasta bake: ground turkey, pepperoni, pasta sauce, fusilli, Italian cheese blend

Herbivorous pasta bake: cherry tomatoes, pasta sauce, fusilli, Italian cheese blend

Sweet potatoes (we're a bit short on green stuff).  Celery sticks (not in the oven).

Fruit crisp: strawberries, blueberries, cranberries.

What's for supper on guitar and choir night? Skillet Goulash (from $5 Dinners)

Skillet Goulash with Spinach, from The $5 Dinner Mom One-Dish Dinners Cookbook, by Erin Chase.  Includes ground beef and pasta; I'll cook the meat separately and add it at the end after taking out a vegetarian part.

Carrot sticks and ??

Chocolate chip oatmeal muffins.

What's for supper? (leftover pork)

Tonight's dinner menu:

Ratouille.  One big pan made with diced leftover pork chops, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red pepper, a little tomato sauce, and canned white beans.  One small pan made with cherry tomatoes, zucchini, red pepper, a little tomato sauce, and canned white beans.  And Italian seasonings.  Cheese, optional.

Gemelli pasta, one of my current favourites.

Fruit, yogurt, and last night's Brannies.

What's for supper? Pizza and pasta

Tonight's dinner menu, on a hot evening:

Frozen pizza, baked in the toaster oven on a piece of foil (because none of our round pans fit this toaster oven)

Pennine Primavera, made with zucchini, mushrooms, and chickpeas

Partly-thawed strawberries, very cold yogurt, and yesterday's zucchini cake.

What's for supper? Skillet Spaghetti

Tonight's dinner menu:

Skillet Spaghetti, made from celery, mushrooms, a bit of pepperoni, a bit of leftover homemade lentil burger, a can of pizza sauce, and some broken-up spaghetti.  Black olives for those who like them.  Cheese on top or on the side.

Steamed spinach

Slow-cooker chocolate dessert for those who eat their spinach.

What's for supper?, asks Cheerfully Frugal

Tonight's dinner menu:

A skillet dinner, one of those non-repeatables because it was made with what we had; but it turned out pretty well anyway.  I browned a pound of ground chicken, added diced onion, a bit of garlic powder, and the last of a bag of frozen vegetables (the old kind with carrots, peas and lima beans); stirred in a bowlful of tomato soup and what was left of last night's vegetarian gravy (milk, water and soy sauce thickened with cornstarch). And three stalks of celery, chopped.  So more or less what you might put in chicken pot pie; more gravy-flavoured than tomato.  I cooked a potful of twisty pasta, the kind that is sometimes labelled Scoobi-Doos; when it was cooked but not overdone, I stirred enough into the chicken mixture to turn it into what looked more or less like tuna casserole.  I also added a few spoonfuls of Parmesan cheese, and let the whole thing sit with the heat off, lid on, for another ten minutes.

Dessert was a can of crushed pineapple and a can of mandarin oranges, frozen and run through the food processor.

What's for supper on our ninth blog birthday?

I knew there was something special about today.  What would that be in squirrel years?  Probably way over the hill.  Well, I like round numbers; let's go for a decade.

Tonight's dinner menu was going to be marinated chicken chunks, pan-cooked and served with pasta and tomato sauce.  I decided to skip the tomato sauce and make it more of an Alfredo thing with cream cheese, Parmesan,  and milk sauce.  And lots of garlic.  Peas on the side.

What's for supper? Pasta night

Tonight's menu:

Butterfly (bowtie) pasta with meat and mushroom sauce
Spinach salad
Bread-machine garlic bread

Pineapple-banana freeze, combining leftovers.

What's for supper? Sausage penne

Tonight's dinner menu:

A casserole made from bratwurst, baby-cut carrots, penne, and tomato paste plus water.  I started the sausage and carrots baking in the tomato paste/water mixture, while I cooked the end of a bag of penne.  (I am not usually a pasta snob, but I think there is penne, and there is penne, if you know what I mean. Getting a better brand seems to make the dish turn out better.) When the penne was mostly done, I drained it and added it to the casserole, along with enough extra liquid to keep it moist, and let the whole thing cook awhile longer, until the sausage was done.  I sliced the sausage to make it easier to serve, and put some grated Parmesan on the table.

Peas

and

Garlic toast made from homemade whole wheat bread.

Yet another spaghetti sauce recipe (slow cooker)

Using what we had...the Apprentice said she liked this one, except for the chunks of pepper.

Mama Squirrel's Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce

1 lb. ground beef or other ground meat
2 little cans pizza sauce
1 little can tomato paste
1 cupful (more or less) beef broth
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 11-oz. package Europe's Best Roasted Gourmet Grilled Red & Yellow Pepper Parrilla (frozen grilled peppers), thawed in the fridge
Hot pasta for serving

Brown and drain the ground beef.  In a slow cooker (or a pot on the stove or a casserole in the oven if you prefer), combine the browned meat, pizza sauce, tomato paste, beef broth, and garlic powder.  The standard instructions would probably be to cook it on High for four hours, but if the meat is browned and hot, really you are just heating the rest of the ingredients through too, so you can probably get away with less time or with cooking it on Low.  If you're going to be home, you might try starting it on High and then turning it down to Low after awhile.  If you're cooking it on the stove or in the oven, just cook it all together till it's sauce.

Just before serving, I cut the grilled peppers up into smaller pieces and stirred them into the sauce.  They were still a bit frozen, but the hot sauce cooked them quickly.  They added some bulk and a bit of colour to the sauce.  You could use other vegetables instead, maybe mushrooms.

Serve on pasta, with cheese or whatever else you like.