Colorful Plates

I am going to start right off the bat with one of our all time favorite (and SO simple) meals: Cilantro Lime Chicken with Avocado Salsa.  This continues my theme of summery meals since, although this can be made year-round, I swear it tastes even better eaten out on the back deck with a glass of wine and some corn-on-the-cob.  This makes a great meal to serve to company too because you don't have to spend tons of time slaving over it.  The salsa can be made hours in advance because the lime juice keeps the avocado from getting really brown (by the way, I just read that it is a myth that the pit of the avocado keeps it green...).  I actually had the salsa in a wrap with some deli chicken the next day for lunch and it still was looking pretty tasty.  Saffron rice is the side we always have with this and I HIGHLY recommend it.  It comes in a yellow bag in the rice section and is super inexpensive (unlike when you try to buy it in spice-jar format).

Moving right along - for the beef eaters out there, we made Enchilada Casserole with Spicy Black Beans.  This would be a good way to mix up taco night if you are feeling a little stale.  It is very straightforward to put together and makes for good leftovers.  I would imagine kids would like the Enchilada Casserole part as well - ours is just easing into peas so we'll have to wait a bit before we try it out on her.

Shrimp Cobb Salad is just as pretty to look at as it is to eat.  Flick did a stellar job of arranging the shrimp in an artistic manner for the photo.  We'll get a good look at what a "normal" plate of our food looks like in one of the recipes below since we generally don't work at presentation when we are just feeding ourselves.  This is a salad that eats like a meal - we had some sourdough bread on the side and thoroughly enjoyed every last bite of this dinner.

I made up some Cajun Red Beans and Rice on a night when Flick was just getting back from traveling so I was cooking for myself.  Depending on what kind of rice you are using, this comes together really quickly.  I used brown rice (not the instant kind) so that was definitely the time limiting factor in the creation of this dish.  Historically we have used the white rice in-a-bag which cooks up in about 10 minutes and seems to always come out good no matter what.  Love that.

We popped back out onto the grill for some Maple Mustard Chicken Thighs with broccoli and a baked potato.  You use part of the marinade for marinading and serve up the extra as a glaze for the chicken when it is time to plate up.  I have a new found appreciation for chicken thighs these days.  We try and buy our meat organic as often as we can and the chicken thighs are about 2 million times less expensive than the boneless skinless chicken breasts.  So, thighs it is!  Not to mention the fact that they taste really good...

Things are not always that neat and pretty come dinner-time at the Flickinger household - as promised, here is the "non-photo" plate - still tastes just as good:

BONUS: You'll notice that there are no vegetarian meals in the photo recipes this week.  Well, Flick was out of town at his brother's bachelor party and had the camera with him so I didn't get to take a picture of the Curry Spiced Noodles that I made while he was gone.  I'll include the recipe though as a 6th meal for the week.  As a heads up - there is a fair amount of chopping/prepping and I recommend doing it before you start cooking.  The cook times are short (2 minutes) before needing to add more ingredients and I had to pull the pan off the heat more than once since I wasn't done prepping when it was time for something to be added.  Also, the sauce was pretty thin for me when I put everything together.  Once the noodles are mixed in, try and let it sit for a few and then give it another mix - the sauce coats everything a little better once it has cooled a bit.  Enjoy!