Life coming at me

Since coming back from the beach, I've been on a huge cooking spree. I picked up the book Julie & Julia before we left for PCB and read it while we were there. The book, I thought, was even better than the movie, and it made me want even more to try some new things.

I picked up groceries Wednesday night. Something that's helped out with my quest to eat more fruits and veggies is that the past couple of times I've gotten groceries, I went ahead and cut up almost all my veggies immediately when I got home so they were ready for use. This has made cooking considerably easier, and I can just throw an awesome salad or a veggie pita together at lunch.

Anyway, Wednesday night, I decided to do a take on the balsamic glazed pork chops I made last week. I had bought boneless pork sirloins, and they were HUGE, so I chopped up one of them in small pieces and stuck the other back in the fridge. Then I salted and peppered it and sauteed it in olive oil. I added the balsamic vinegar and sugar like before, but I used a little more this time, and it helped me not burn it like I did the first time. I also added in carrots, red peppers, baby portabella mushrooms and shallots. Then I served it over Zatarain's Caribbean-style yellow rice. All the flavors ended up working really well together.

Thursday night I did hamburgers. I mixed the meat with A-1 Sauce, and that was just about all I did to it. I also sauteed mushrooms for my burger, and added Colby Jack cheese to both mine and Bobby's. I served it with dirty rice and salad. Sadly, we didn't have hamburger buns, but I enjoyed mine on white bread, and Bobby had his without bread.

Tonight I decided to find a recipe that involved figs, because I bought some figs on sale at Publix. I found this recipe for chicken with a balsamic fig sauce. The recipe took a little prep but was actually fairly easy, and it ended up being delicious! I also tried some oven-roasted broccoli with olive oil, kosher salt, ground pepper, garlic and red pepper, thanks to a recommendation from my online friend Sharon. I decided to do some sauteed veggies, too, so I put together some carrots, red peppers and mushrooms and added a little Italian dressing and some parsley. I also did sauteed squash and onions. Dinner tonight was really yummy!

I'm pleased with doing a little more cooking in the past week, and I feel good about learning to cook some new stuff!