Now what?

The week after Thanksgiving is a tough one when it comes to cooking, especially when you are hosting...and all of your guests are staying with you.  When guests are around just for the meal, it is easy to send them off with Tupperware containers full of tasty leftovers.  When your guests are staying with you, well, you end the night with a pretty full refrigerator!  Fortunately, no one was shy about whipping up turkey sandwiches, having mini-Thanksgiving dinners for lunch, and slowly working through 4 pies.  That meant that there was no taking a break from cooking the week after Thanksgiving this year.  Fortunately, my Mom was here to help.  She took care of the first half of the week and then it was up to me to cover Flick, Ellie, and myself after my family headed back east.

This refrigerator is just the right age for our kitchen...

Here are some recipes that yield such great results that you won't mind spending a little time in the kitchen for them.  We'll start with Grilled Chicken Florentine Pasta.  As is standard with spinach dishes, I added more than the recipe called for since it cooks down so much, and I like spinach.  Ellie also enjoyed this meal, and actually had it for leftovers tonight!

My mom made a few polenta dishes for us growing up, and this was a great one.  Flick is not wild about polenta but he didn't seem to have any problems having more than one helping of this meal.  Polenta Pepper Torte is flavorful and satisfying - a good comfort food dish without absurd amounts of cheese or cream.  Not that there is anything wrong with cheese...

Remember when I said that I had a love-hate relationship with our slow cooker?  Well, here is a recipe that I love in my slow cooker.  Slow-Cooked Pulled Pork.  The beauty of this recipe, it is simple to put together.  You won't have to wake up extra early in the morning to get it going, and it cooks for 8-10 hours so it will be happily simmering along while you go about your day.  This was one of the recipes my mom made so she did all the prep while I did some shredding...and plenty of eating.  She added some BBQ sauce to the final product to give it a little more flavor, but it was juicy and delicious and made for a great lunch at work this week.

Another recipe from my mom was Halibut with Mango Salsa.  This isn't your typical Mango Salsa; it plays to some different senses with a full teaspoon of cinnamon.  Delicious!  We really liked this recipe, and actually, Ellie did too!  She didn't eat much salsa but the fish was right up her alley.

Finally, this Minestrone recipe is a good meal for a cold wintery day.  It makes a pretty good amount of food and again, is baby friendly (once we drained out the broth and made sure it was not too hot).  With any luck, next week we'll have some Minestrone weather, enjoy the meals!