Cooking New Things

It's so easy to get in the habit of cooking the same things week after week.  Grocery shopping becomes routine, the usual meals become the list you make out of habit.  For us ground beef is a must!  Tacos, Spaghetti, Meatloaf, and those are just favorites, ground beef can be dinner in so many ways.  I have always depended on my grill for most of my cooking.  I love grilling, makes for easy clean up.  Living in Vermont has changed my usual a bit.  Grilling really isn't a option.  If I really wanted to uncover it from the snow and stand in the -30 degrees it still wouldn't get hot enough to cook anything, except maybe a rare steak and that would be perfect for me, but not worth the work.  So this year I decided to change things up and try new things.  So far it has been great my husband is excited about the new meals and so are the kids!  I still keep in mind my family's likes and dislikes when choosing a new meal but for the most part they are very open so it makes it easy to do new things.

So far I have made: Seared Tuna on a Spinach Salad with Pomegranate & Blood Orange Dressing; Swiss Steak; Sausage Gumbo Pot Pie with Garlic Bread Crust; Thai Shrimp with Won Ton Toppers; Lemon, Soy Sauce & Brown Sugar Marinated Salmon with Spinach Salad and Wild Rice