Southwestern Egg Rolls and Mashed Sweet Perderders

I take a lot of recipes from this site (link to this recipe), but they have some seriously good Meatless Monday ideas. Love it.
Basically, the egg rolls are just thawed frozen spinach, thawed frozen corn, black beans, and some spices. The recipe called for cheese in them too, but Michael was nice and left it out so mine could be low-cal (and his could be topped with as much cheese as he likes). Pretty simple to make, and pretty tasty. Could be a great party appetizer (although I'd probably actually put cheese in them if I was serving them to guests).

No recipe for the mashed sweet potatoes—we just had about 4 baked sweet potatoes hanging out in our fridge, so we microwaved them, mashed them up with a fork (skins and all), added a splash of milk to help bind them, and seasoned with salt and pepper. It also would have been easy to go more of a sweet route, with maple syrup and cinnamon instead of the pepper. Either, way, super easy and really, really good. I love sweet potatoes—definitely one of my favorite vegetables.

Steamed Asparagus and a Poached Egg

Steamed asparagus, on a bed of white rice. Topped with a microwave-poached egg, a capful or two of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and grated parmesan. Super simple, super seasonal. Don't even need a recipe.

Spicy Lentil Salad and Fennel Potatoes

So I made this lentil salad—supposedly the "best lentil salad." It was actually probably the best way I've ever eaten lentils, but I don't know how amazing it was. The first night that I made it, it was just really spicy. That's actually where most of the work of this recipe was—in measuring out all the spices! I think the only changes I made were using regular green lentils (which held up just fine, since I left them al dente instead of cooking them to mush like most people do to lentils), and I also reduced the oil to 1/4 cup.

I will, say, though, that the leftovers just kept getting better and better as the flavors melded and chilled out a little. The first night that I made this, there was just too much going on (and way too much heat) for me to really enjoy it, but in the next few days, it actually got pretty good. I'm not sure when I'd make this again—it was a bit of work for something that wasn't even that good until a few days later, but it's still a fine recipe, and I do give it a lot of credit for being the first time that I've actually thought lentils were good. Another thing we discovered was that this particular recipe made way too much—we were eating it for days, and we still had enough leftovers to take to a dinner party. And we still had leftovers after that. It doesn't look like that much, but it makes a frig ton.



We also made these fennel potatoes, which were pretty interesting. I haven't cooked much with fennel seeds, so these were some pretty new flavors. Is this going to become a regular in my cooking lineup? Unlikely. But it was really fun to take a pretty standard dish and try it with a bold, unfamiliar spice. I definitely enjoyed it, but I think my biggest hangup is that I just don't know what to serve something so boldly spiced with. Normally I pair bold dishes with rice or potatoes or pasta, but this is already straight carbs, so I'm unsure.
Anyway, the only recipe mod I made was using 1 tablespoon of oil instead of 3. The other thing that I wish I had done was dicing or slicing the garlic instead of just tossing whole, smashed cloves in. After they cooked, a smashed garlic clove looked a lot like a bite of smashed potato, which meant you had to pay attention to what your fork was spearing lest you wind up with a big bite of nothing but garlic.

Bubble-Up Pizza and Baked Onion Rings

Recipe inspired by this post, but (of course) modified slightly.
We made homemade baking powder biscuits, which made this recipe slightly less lazy, but still pretty dang easy. Roll out the biscuit dough and cut into little squares. Each square should be about the size of a normal ball of cookie dough. You don't want them too big—they'll puff up a lot, and it's good for each one to be about one or two bites.

Then we mixed the little squares of biscuit dough with a big can of spaghetti sauce, 3/4 cup shredded mozzarella, and a teaspoon of dried basil. Pour it into a pie dish (ours is a 9-inch deep dish, and it still almost overflowed, so it has to be a big pie dish, or else use a square pan), top with another 1/4 cup mozzarella, and bake, covered, for however long the biscuit recipe calls for baking them. You can uncover in the last few minutes to help brown the cheese on top.

I really loved this. I was nibbling at the leftovers in the fridge for the whole next day. I also really loved what a no-brainer meal this was. Apart from making the biscuits (and you can always buy the canned store kind), this required basically no measuring or chopping or thought. That's pretty awesome. I will say, though, that the two of us ate probably about 3/4 of this just for dinner. If we were making this for guests, we'd have to at least double or triple the recipe. I guess it's just that good!



We also made my sister's recipe for baked onion rings: chop up a big onion, and dredge the rings in flour, then a beaten, watered-down egg (like maybe 2 parts egg:1 part water), and a mixture of half panko breadcrumbs and half seasoned breadcrumbs. I forgot that part and only used panko, which made it very crispy, but not nearly seasoned enough. I think using all panko would be fine if I had remembered to add a lot of salt in with the breadcrumbs.

And then you just bake them at 400 until one side is golden brown (maybe 10-15 minutes?) and then flip and let the other side brown. Pro tip: you can spray them with vegetable oil before baking to make them, like, legit brown. The more oil you use, the browner they'll get. It's a fine line between trying to keep it healthy and light and trying to make it look (and taste) a little nicer. I actually forgot to add any spray, and they still turned out really tasty, but I wonder if they might have been even better with a little spray.