Meal Reviews

So remember that post I wrote about the Home Cooked Meals? Well I made all but one and I'm going to tell you about them. :)

I didn't remember how EXPENSIVE pork tenderloin was so I'll have to wait for some to go on sale to make the Brown Sugar and Balsamic Pork Loin meal.

The first recipe we tried was the Lemon Garlic Spaghetti. This was supposed to be a meatless dinner but Gabe HAS to have some sort of meat in all his meals.  I went with shrimp. Gabe and the kids love seafood. Me, not so much but I can do without meat when pasta is involved so it worked out. My main concern was the pasta ending up dry. You make your own sauce from garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, and Parmesan cheese. Well the pasta was a little dry and I might have added too much lemon, but the taste was ok. Gabe said it was a nice taste change from what we've been eating lately. The kids weren't big fans of the pasta, but devoured the shrimp. All in all, I wouldn't make this on a regular basis and I would definitely be trying to change the recipe a little to better suit our taste buds. I grade it a C.

Our second recipe was the Beef Taquitos. OMG were they AWESOME! They were super easy to make and you can basically add any ingredient you want. I added just beef, onions, a little bit of green peppers, salsa, and cheese. The tortilla shells were a little hard to roll without them ripping, so we put them in our electric saucepan with a wet paper towel. That kept them warm and moist and they rolled SO much better. The kids each ate one without too much complaint. But Gabe and I stuffed our faces! They were just so good! We'll be making these often. This one definitely gets an A!

Third was the Hawaiian BBQ Chicken. I looked everywhere and could not find ANY hawaiin BBQ sauce! I ended up making up my own "sort of Hawaiian" chicken. I added regular BBQ and then chunked pineapple and onions. It definitely tasted more like just BBQ sauce but still tasted good. Christian ate all his chicken without complaint and Alena didn't like it. Gabe loved it and I thought it was just ok. So this grades all over the board from us! I may try it again if I can find that darn Hawaiian BBQ sauce! I give it a B-.

Last, we have the Egg Brunch Casserole. While we haven't eaten it yet, this is in the crockpot now and I can tell you the smell is GREAT! I'm thinking this one will be a keeper.