Week 29: Inspired by a color

This is not one of my proudest posts, which might explain why I am so slow in updating it.  Our challenge was to do a dish "inspired by a color" and had grand aspirations of doing an entirely purple plate with eggplant and red cabbage followed by wine poached pears for dessert.

Instead, I made shrimp pot pie, and it was "sort of white, sort of green" for my color inspiration.  Luckily, it was delicious.  The puffed pastry crust was a little disappointing, but the fennel, leek, and shrimp filling definitely made up for it.

Next week's challenge is burgers, and I'll try to be a little more impressive!

Week 28: Citrus

For our citrus challenge, I did a spicy orange glazed chicken with lemon flavored green beans and plain corn muffins.  The chicken was roasted in the oven and brushed liberally with a sauce of orange marmalade mixed with hot garlic chili sauce.  It was delicious, and even grandma requested extra sauce!

Week 27: BBQ

For this week's assignment of BBQ, it didn't occur to me that I should actually try to use the barbecue grill.  Instead, I made a dish that captures the spirit of BBQ using the slow cooker.  

This was our "5th of July" feast and it consisted of "BBQ" pulled pork sandwiches, baked maple beans, and a spinach pasta salad.

It was absolutely delicious.  The pork spends almost 5 hours in the slow cooker before being shredded and put in a hot oven to crisp up a little.  The pasta salad is one of my favorites, using farfalle pasta and two entire bags of spinach.

Dessert was outside the scope of the challenge, but it was a big hit, so I'll include it here.  I made baked apple dumplings from a recipe I found online.  The secret ingredient is a little bit of Mountain Dew!

 

    

       

They were just right fresh out of oven with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream! 

      

Week 26: Pizza

Another challenge I was looking forward to: Pizza week! I made a pretty tasty pizza that replaces traditional tomato sauce with an avocado spread and topped it with sweet corn, cherry tomatoes, and monterey jack cheese.

I even used a pizza stone for the first time, which really did seem to help crisp up the crust.  Overall this was pretty tasty, next time I'll add steak or chicken.