OK first of all I cannot get over this weather in St. Louis right now.  Here we are in February and the past few days have been sunshine and in the 70s. Is this real life? I have decided that heaven is in the mid 70s.  It really is the perfect temperature.  Not too hot and not too cold.  Anyway. On to the real reason you are reading this blog- food.  

I've been cooking some new recipes this week as well as some old favorites.  One of the new ones I enjoyed was the cajun chicken flatbread recipe from the food blog Tastes Better from Scratch.  You can find the recipe here. Aside from this being very tasty, I really appreciated that it was such a quick meal! It was done in no time.  As I've said before, I do most of my shopping at Aldi.  Aldi sells these naan breads that I love to make pizzas on because they are the perfect size for a personal one.  (Or for me to eat 2/3 of one and my husband to eat 1 and 1/3) So I just used those instead of one large flat bread.  The sauce was a cajun spiced aioli.  For those of you that don't know what an aioli is, think similar to mayonnaise.  In fact, this recipe uses mayonnaise for the base of the sauce.  It is then topped with mozzarella cheese, cajun spiced chicken, mini sweet peppers, onion, avocado, and cilantro.  For the chicken you just season with salt, pepper, and cajun seasoning and pan fry until done.  The recipe calls for you to grill it, but I was lazy.  Quick tip for cooking meat: Only flip once! I leave the chicken on one side in the pan until it is almost done and then flip it for a few more minutes to cook out the last bit of pink on the other side.  The flipping once is true of all meats FYI.  That way you don't lose the juices by cutting into it to know if it's ready and what not.  

I also went to Crushed Red this week for dinner.  It's my husband's favorite place to go.  And it has a lot of healthy options because they have really yummy salads.  They make the salads right in front of you and use a mezzaluna knife to chop it all up.  That way all of the bites have an even amount of ingredients in it.  If you don't know what a mezzaluna knife is, you can google it :) I got the farmer's market salad, which has granny smith apples, goat cheese (like I told you, if it has goat cheese, I'm going to order it), craisins, turkey, and sunflower seeds in it.  All with a honey mustard dressing.  Another favorite salad of mine there is the chipotle BBQ chicken salad.  Also delicious.  We also shared a pizza- the gorgonzola chicken.  White sauce, cheese, gorgonzola, chicken, spinach, onion and tomato.  Delicious.  It's a nice casual restaurant.  But not too casual.  So a perfect lunch spot.  They have two locations- we went to the one in Kirkwood. 

I also did homemade ribs this week with sweet potatoes.  I have made these ribs a few times now and it is so easy and they are always tender.  Oddly enough, I found this "make ribs in your oven" recipe and method on wikihow.  If you have never checked out that site, you should.  If you don't know how to do something, that site has the answer.  I have learned multiple things from there.  You can find the rib article that I used here.  I used the dry rub method, but the article shows you different ways to do it.  The best part is how simple it is.  You dry rub the ribs, wrap them in foil and then let them cook in your oven at 250 for 2.5-3 hours.  Perfect.  Then you top with your favorite BBQ sauce.  (Or not, my husband claims to be a purist and doesn't use sauce)  I used Sweet Baby Ray's sweet and spicy.  It's the perfect sauce to me because prior to finding this, I would find a sweet sauce and a spicy sauce and mix them.  Sweet Baby Ray did it for me this time.  For the sweet potatoes, I simply boiled and mashed them and then added a little milk, butter, parmesan cheese, salt, pepper and a dash of hot sauce for a kick.  Yum.  The best thing to put in them is a dash of chipotles in adobo sauce, if you have it.  Or putting cream cheese in them is also good.  Or sour cream.  I'm a huge fan of savory sweet potatoes, and I think they go perfectly with BBQ.  You can also do oven baked sweet potato fries if you are feeling adventurous.  I have done this before and they are yummy!

I decided to go out to breakfast on Saturday morning with some girlfriends since my husband was working.  I absolutely love breakfast food and I very very rarely go out to breakfast.  So this was definitely a treat.  We decided to go to a St. Louis favorite- Uncle Bill's Pancake and Dinner House.  And everything was so good.  Just classic breakfast food- nothing fancy.  But that's just what you need sometimes, right? I just got the bacon and eggs plate, which came with hash browns and a stack of pancakes.  I had my little babe with me and he decided the pancakes were for him and ate more than half of them.  But I did get to eat some of them and they were delicious.  Hash browns are pretty much the reason I go out for breakfast and these were cooked perfectly- crispy, but not too crispy.  And the over easy eggs and bacon were great too! I definitely recommend Uncle Bill's if you are a breakfast food lover like myself.  

Last night we had my mom over for dinner since my dad left on a business trip.  We decided to make our go to meal lately- thai red curry meatballs.  I tried this recipe for the first time last summer and have made it once to twice per month since then.  It's that good.  And my husband is always requesting it.  And I'm happy to oblige because I love it too.  It's red curry meat balls (I use ground turkey, even though the recipe calls for ground chicken) in a coconut red curry peanut sauce over brown jasmine rice.  They are sooooo good.  You can find the recipe here. And you won't be sorry.  They have a kick to them, but they aren't too spicy, in my opinion.  Something to note- I have made these multiple times, as stated before and it is realllllly important to use fresh ground meat.  I tried making them a few times with frozen meat and it really did make a huge difference! So go for the fresh meat, if possible.  

That has been my eating experience the past few days/week.  I hope you are enjoying the blog as much as I am enjoying writing it.  I started a cooking club this past month and our second meeting is this week.  So I'm excited to share some fun cooking club stuff with you soon!

Love,

Grace