I'm Back!

It feels like it's been forever since I last posted!  We have had so much going on & then we had computer issues, but I'm back up and running!  First, Steve asked that I update the blog with this picture of our refrigerator:

We found humor in the fact that we are almost officially completely out of food, and yet there is no space in our fridge because we are hoarding beer.  Actually, I am not hoarding beer, Steve is.  I benefit from it though, so I guess that makes me an enabler.  Anyways, we had friends over last Friday night and Steve told everyone to bring beer and the result was that we had pizza and LOTS of Pabst Blue Ribbon. We got a pretty good chuckle from the look of our fridge.  Between this, the condiments and the Lean Pockets, our fridge looks like it belongs to a 19 year old frat boy.

On the food front, here's the meal plan for the week:
Monday: We had Rainbow Shrimp Pasta (I'll share the recipe in just a second).  We've basically abandoned meatless Monday, but it's mostly just because I have the meat in the house and I think buying meat alternatives kind defeats the point of this experiment.
Tonight: We had chicken fajita quesadillas
Tomorrow: Homemade Pizza with Peppers and Onions
Thursday: I think I'll finally make the sloppy joes that I've been blogging about for the last 2 weeks
Friday: TBD

As for last night, I hit a new low. I turned to a real "Real Housewife" for dinner. I found this recipe for Rainbow Shrimp Pasta on Bethenny Frankel's website (LOVE me some Bethenny Ever After!). Here's what the final product looked like:

It was SO delicious!  I made a couple changes: I didn't have white wine so I left it out & I substituted a quarter cup of olive oil (I know, healthy, right?!?).  So I used a quarter cup regular olive oil plus 2 Tbsp. of the sundried tomato oil.  I added a ton more garlic so it was more like a shrimp scampi (think 4-5 cloves for the whole recipe).  I also omitted the red pepper flake because I didn't want it to be too spicy for Will, but I'm sure the recipe would have been even better with it.  I also used red pepper instead of yellow because that's just what I had in the fridge and I didn't have any fresh herbs (see below) so I left those out too.  All in all...awesome! Will even gobbled it up.  He still won't touch shrimp, which makes him a freak, but he's young and doesn't know any better.  I'll let it slide for now.

Tonight I made chicken fajita quesadillas using fried peppers & onions (we'll use the extra tomorrow night for the pizza topping), whole wheat tortillas, taco cheese, and fajita chicken.  I also happened to have cilantro since I attempted to buy fresh parsley for the pasta above, but I bought cilantro by accident.  Luckily, Steve and I love cilantro and it provided just enough brightness to the dinner.  Plus it makes the food look so pretty!  Here's how they came out:

I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but Steve actually started eating his before I could take the picture so I had to kind of cover up his bite marks with salsa in order to take a picture where the quesadilla didn't look like it had been mauled by a bear! I figure it's a compliment that he couldn't wait to dig in!

Tonight we are having a history geek evening watching Ken Burns' "Civil War" documentary on PBS.  It's on because it is the sesqicentennial anniversary of Fort Sumter (that's the first battle for those who don't know).  We chose to watch the episode "A Long Bloody Affair" about Shiloh and Antietam last night instead of watching the national championship game.  No, that's not a typo, that's a normal weeknight night for us.  Heck, that's a normal Saturday night for us.

Tomorrow I'll have new recipes and Civil War fun facts to share (I KNOW you are hanging on your seats!).