Culinary Quests for the week

So, last week I only got to 2 of the recipes that I picked out - the Chicken Breasts with Mushroom Sauce & the Sesame-Orange Shrimp/Chicken Stir Fry. I have picked out the new recipes for the week - but first I wanted to share my thoughts on these 2 new recipes.

Chicken w/Mushroom Sauce - I would give this a 3 / 5 rating. The chicken breasts were fine - but I wasn't too crazy about the sauce. It literally looked (and smelled) like homemade cream of mushroom soup - and was very watered down. I tried to thicken it up - but it only helped a little. The sauce didn't stick to the noodles or the chicken, so even though the sauce was poured over top of the dish, you had to try and sop some of the sauce up with each bite. I would have liked this recipe much better if the sauce were thicker and creamier. It was o.k. - Randy liked it - but I don't think I'll go out of my way to make this again. However I did like the variety of mushrooms in the dish.

Sesame-Orange Shrimp/Chicken Stir Fry - WOW. This was soo good. I give it a 4.5 / 5 rating. I forgot to buy more rice at the grocery store, so I used rice (pad thai) noodles and it was better than it would have been with the rice. The sauce is zesty and coats the veggies/meat well. The only thing I would change would be to add some orange zest to the sauce to give it some extra citrus flavor. But all in all, I will definitely make this recipe again - and will always use the noodles instead of the rice.

This weekend I was working on my "Binder" (I cut out/paste recipes to try from Cooking Light - I started the binder 5 years ago - - it's HUGE!) and I noticed that I had a lot of side dishes that I wanted to try, so this week I'm going to try some of those out. They are:

- Pasta with pesto (never made pesto before - but I wanted to use up the basil I didn't get to last week & it's also an excuse to use my food processor!!)

- Italian Chicken (chicken dredged in Italian breadcrumbs & garlic, pan fried) with Roasted Asparagus with Balsalmic Shallot Butter. I'll serve my chulla bread with this.

- Hamburgers with Garlic Fries (one of my clients gave me a great trick to use when making burgers - when forming the patties use some tomato sauce - I use the kind with Oregano & Basil - it makes the burgers extra juicy and gives it another dimension of flavor)

Last night I made meatloaf - I've made this before but I really particularly like this recipe from Cooking Light. Last night I made an actual loaf instead of the muffins. I served it with steamed broccoli and mashed sweet potato.

Bon apetit!