meals april 15-21

s  pizza pasta, salad
m  blackened chicken with quinoa
t  meatloaf cupcakes topped with mashed potatoes, green beans
w  tomato sausage risotto, salad
th  baked potato soup
f  flatbread pizzas, salad
s  leftovers

flatbread pizzas

instead of our usual naan pizza topped with sauteed mushrooms, olives and roasted red peppers + cheddar or romano, i got some flatbread from tj's today and made 4 different mini pizzas. it was fun to spice it up a bit and experiment. here's what we had:

1. prosciutto + romano topped with arugula

2. roasted garlic, red onion, bacon + mozzarella topped with arugula (my favorite. there's definitely more garlic roasting in my future.)

3. pepperoni and mozzarella (standard, but it turned out sooo good!)

4. bacon, egg and mozzarella (i think this was wes's favorite. there are two flatbreads leftover so i foresee us having this for brekkie sometime this week.)

4 out of 10

four out of ten of the 'new things' list can be checked off. in my last post i mentioned the almond joy was a flop, but the amaretto and marshmallows turned out really well. guinness cupcakes were good, but the frosting was a bit weird.

i made the amaretto for a present for wes for his birthday and he was quite pleased with the taste! it was super easy and quick to make, and i figured it was about $5 cheaper than buying a bottle of amaretto. it could be $10 cheaper if i bought the least expensive vodka. 

with the help of ange and rob and their kitchenaid, we made mint chip marshmallows. this has been my favorite from the list so far. i've always loved the mint and chocolate combo, so this was easy for me to like. the recipe said we'd get 16 marshmallows out of it, but i got about 50 big-sized ones. go figure. it is time consuming, so i can't imagine we'd be making these too often, but it would be fun to experiment with other flavor combinations.

i made the guinness cupcakes at ange and rob's the morning of wes's birthday. the recipe said it yielded 2 dozen cupcakes, but we had so much batter leftover, we were able to make an 8-in round cake, too! since wes doesn't like cream cheese i found a recipe for a guinness buttercream frosting, which tasted ok, but it had a strange look to it as when the guinness was added to the butter/sugar mix it caused the ingredients to separate and was a bit runny. anyway, we took them with us to ztejas...i brought a candle and matches. i did call beforehand to make sure that was ok, but i still felt a bit awkward doing it!

i'll post photos if i can get around to it! 

i need to start on the savory list... ;)