What I cooked this past week & ingredients...

I like to cook something I've never made before every week. I get ideas from Food Network, restaurants' menus, other people's cooking, and simply mixing whatever I have in my house at the time.

So last week I made grilled chicken breasts stuffed with pepper jack cheese, spinach, and pesto, covered in pesto as well. These are the things that went through my brain when I put this meal idea together. First, "I want to make some stuffed chicken, I haven't done that in a while". Second, "stuffed chicken needs cheese, I have pepper jack, I'm not spending any more money on food this week and I don't feel like going to the grocery store". Third, "I have this spinach I need to use before it goes bad, I let it go bad all the time and end up wasting my money, I'm not doing that this time". Fourth, "Stuffed chicken can get dry pretty quickly, lemme add some pesto in this. I need to use this pesto I made because I don't know if/when it goes bad." Fifth, "I should addd some pesto on top to cover it, so it looks pretty and to make sure it isn't dry again".

So over the weekend, I made my usual breakfast: scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, and pancakes. I bought these cranberries from the grocery store the week before that I needed to use. I've never had fresh cranberries before, so I bit into one and it was completely sour, I was over it. So I remembered a technique I saw on food network and I threw some cranberries in a warm skillet, added a little warm and some sugar and made a cranberry compote. I added that on top of the pancakes and they were mm mm good! I originally bought the cranberries because I wanted to make cranberry orange pancakes, I've been addicted to these cranberry orange nut muffins from Target and I want to use that combination for something else. I didn't make a whole lot of the compote as you can see below, because I got nervous when I tasted the sourness of the cranberry. I would like to add that Hormel makes the absolute best pork bacon there is, next up is Smithfield. Debate me on this if you want to, but nothing beats the sweet and salty aroma of that Hormel Black Label Maple bacon in my kitchen. YES GAWD!

For dinner that same night, I made some pizza fries that I saw floating around Instagram a few weeks back. Justyn and I had been saying that we wanted some and I had been saying I was going to make them, but I never did, probably because we mainly eat healthy and he's on some fat loss Atkins Southbeach Herbalife diet BS with his friends. (Clearly I'm over it) Never the less, I finally made some. I used regular ol' Ore Ida zesty curly fries cooked them for a bit on 400, then covered them in mozzarella (don't be cheap with the cheese) and turkey pepperoni. I made turkey burgers seasoned with Indian seasonings  (cumin, garam masala, salt, pepper, fresh cut yellow sweet onions, and probably something else I can't remember) and sauteed broccoli for our veggie. I bought some famous Dave's pickles from the grocery store and they are absolutely delicious. I love pickles because I love vinegar, so I just had to share that.