Dinner at our place....

It's been good to be home. Sleeping in our own bed. Having access to a closet instead of a suitcase. And yes, even cooking our own meals. To aid in getting back in the groove I decided we needed to try out some new recipes and I'm happy to report SUCCESS! (All courtesy of smittenkitchen.com. How I LOVE that website.)

Couscous and Feta stuffed peppers-
Couscous and feta? Yes please. This meal was delicious AND easy.....right up my alley. The end result was super cute - what with the peppers stuffed with couscous and all. But in all honesty I'll likely skip the whole roasted pepper part in the future (unless I have guests over and want it to look all fancy or something.) The flavor of the couscous was so good on it's own (hello fennel seeds....so good) that C and I both ended up scooping it out of the pepper and eating them separately as to not have the flavor of the pepper overpower the couscous salad. Definitely a new fave.


Skirt steak salad with blue cheese-
A very fun, hearty salad. I love arugula, heaven knows I love blue cheese and I learned the difference between cherry and grape tomatoes. All good things. Our skirt steak turned out a little chewy....whether that's just the nature of skirt steak or how we cooked it I'm not sure. Also, I'll probably flavor up the steak a touch more next time. All in all a great salad when you want something light, but heartier.

Linguine with tomato-almond pesto-
There's something about getting to chop things up in a food processor that just excites me. Seriously, I get a kick out of it....makes me feel super legit in the kitchen. HA! This meal was so easy and so good. I had never before added almonds to a pesto - very fun. I definitely agree with the recipe - don't chop the almonds up too much - it's so tasty to get a chunk now and then. Also, the recipe suggest 1 or 2 garlic cloves so naturally C and I put in 2 cloves. After all, there's no such thing as too much garlic right? Hmmm...our cloves were both outside cloves and thus pretty large and the garlic was STRONG - borderline too strong for us (remember it's raw so it's pretty potent) which is really saying something. In the future I'll put in 2 if they are small, but only 1 if it's a large clove.


Easy.
Delicious.
Success.