Friday night, I had Red Sox tickets. I had bought them for Kenzie for Christmas, so we went with Mark and Nick. It was a bit stressful, because the whole time, I was remembering that I had cooking to do to after we got home. Saturday was our Cure is Coming event, and I had invited the team over for breakfast. I had already made energy bites, and I hate yogurt made, but I wanted to make a casserole. We ended up leaving in the 2nd inning due to my stress (and luckily - the Sox lost in extra innings!) and thus, there I was, cooking up bacon at 2 midnight. I am not going to lie that I was stressed about being up so late and having to get up quite early, but it was worth it in the end! My hash brown casserole was a big hit with Team Tony in the morning. Shockingly, it was from Cooking Light, but it does not taste light, with bacon, low fat sour cream, and low fat cream of mushroom soup. It is creamy and potato-y - two things I love. It was a nice filling way to get Team Tony ready to go support out favorite charity! My energy bites were also a huge hit; I ended up whipping up a second doubled batch later that afternoon! They are chocolatey, peanut buttery, and have a great honey taste too (in fact, we are officially out of honey). Two successful breakfast dishes down!
Today, I let Kenzie pick dinner and she chose Thai chicken enchiladas. I am always interested in anything with fresh cilantro, and add coconut milk and you've got me intrigued. The filling is chicken, cabbage, carrots, onions, garlic, green onions, peanuts, sweet chili sauce and coconut milk. It tasted great, and I had a lot left over because I tripled it. The only weird thing is that the enchilada sauce is a mixture of cocout milk and chili sauce, so it's very thin. It makes for a rather mushy bottom half of the enchilada, since while it bakes, the top dries out, but the sauce kind of sogs up the bottom. Kenzie couldn't get past the texture. Surprisingly enough, Mark, Nick and Mom - the pickiest and most texture-aware people - liked theirs and ate them, so who knows? Probably not something I'd make again, but we all agreed the filling would be excellent on rice, so maybe I'll make the insides again and skip the enchilada part.
Tonight I have another batch of yogurt incubating. My last batch came out too watery because I did not have a big enough strainer, but I picked one up today, so it's yogurt time. In other news, my gardening hobby, while starting to get a bit too expensive, is going quite well. My herbs that I planted over vacation are growing up nice and strong, and today I planted the strawberry plants we bought in a strawberry pot. I am thrilled to announce that one of them even has a pinkish berry! Very exciting. Soon I will be able to plant my tomatoes in the garden and move my herbs into the buckets I bought to keep them in. I am hoping this was the last time I had to buy cilantro :)
Recipes:
hash brown casserole with bacon, onions and cheese
energy bites
Thai chicken enchiladas
