Weekend Food!

>It is only Saturday night and I have a lot of food to talk about!

Last night I went to dinner with a friend. We went to Flattop Grill! I absolutely love Flattop…being able to make your own stir fry but not have to cook it is the best thing! I had always thought that people made their Flattop dinners just like mine. I put in a little bit of noodles and a ton of vegetables. However, last night the friend I went with and quite a few people around us made a sort of lo mein (mostly noodles and a small amount of vegetables). I am not sure I would ever make my Flattop dinner like this but it was interesting to realize that everyone personalizes their Flattop experience very differently! Also, if you have ever been to Flattop I have two tidbits of information: 1) don’t put rice in your stir fry bowl because they will bring it to the table for free and 2) you can get more of the really good flat bread for free if you just ask!

After dinner I went grocery shopping and because of that I got to cook this afternoon! One of my favorite cold salads is a combination of my aunt’s recipe and some of my changes. The way she made the feta salad was with noodles, spinach, feta cheese, chicken and balsamic dressing. I am not a fan of spinach but loved the idea of the salad so I changed the spinach to lima beans and started making it with whole wheat noodles! I love making it because all you have to do is boil noodles, thaw a package of lima beans, crumble some feta cheese (I use a really great feta from my hometown dairy!), and cook some chicken breasts! After all of that is done is put it in a bowl and pour the balsamic salad dressing on it. It usually lasts me a week of lunches which is so great because I don’t have to worry about making something in the morning!

For tonight’s dinner I really wanted something warm because it is freezing in my apartment today and I wanted tomato soup because I just bought a loaf of pepper asiago cheese bread and thought it would be good with tomato soup. But Friday night I made a box of plain whole wheat couscous and it tasted like cardboard (I normally make the kind with a flavor packet – Garlic and Olive Oil is the best!). I didn’t want to throw it away but I knew I couldn’t just eat it with a chicken breast because of the way it tasted. So I decided to make some tomato soup, poor the couscous in it and then I had half the bag of lima beans left so i threw them in! It started turning out pretty good but it was lacking flavor. I poured in a bunch of hot sauce, some chili power, some garlic powder and pepper. Once it was heated I grated so Jarlsberg cheese on top and it was great! I love making dinner out of a couple random ingredients, a bunch of spices, and a great topper (the cheese)!