Weekend Cooking 5/5

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking.  This is perfect for me since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Tonight, in honor of the holiday, I am making my Chicken and Bean Enchiladas with Mexican Rice and Orange-Mango Fizzy Drinks. This is one of my family's favorite meals, so we are all looking forward to it.

I didn't write a Weekend Cooking post last week because we were camping (see photos in yesterday's Snapshot Saturday post), so I'll cover two weeks today. I did a lot of quick and easy meals recently because we have been very busy.

I did have the opportunity to try two more recipes from my new Cooking Light's Slow Cooker Tonight! cookbook, and they were both amazing! I am loving this cookbook and using my crockpot much more. One night, I made Chinese Pork Tenderloin with Noodles, a sort-of lo-mein type dish with both Thai and Chinese flavors. This is not at all your typical crockpot meal, and would work well at any time of the year. You cook the pork in the slow cooker first, then remove it and add veggies and finish the sauce, then toss is all together with the shredded pork and noodles. It was easy and full of flavor! We had two dinners from it, plus I had two lunches as well (sorry the recipe is not online).

This week, I made Beef Brisket with Beer, another recipe from the slow cooker cookbook and another hit! I added sliced carrots along with the parsnips and took their advice to serve it with mashed potatoes. It was absolutely delicious - we all loved it! I had never cooked brisket before but have eaten it and found it often to be tough. Cooked this way in the crockpot, it was tender and tasty, and I loved the flavor of the parsnips with it. Again, we got two dinners and a couple of lunches from about 20 minutes of cooking.

This weekend, my mother and her husband came to visit, so I used something my mother bought me for my birthday last year: a clay pot. She introduced me to this wonderful style of cooking, but I have just begun to learn how to use the pot. Since my mom is a partial vegetarian, I made Clay Pot Baked Fish for dinner on Friday. You'll never guess where I found the recipe...yes, Cooking Light!  I know, I am predictable, but I just love their recipes. The baked fish recipe is not online, but here is a listing of some of their other clay pot recipes that are available online. The fish (cooked with sliced potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, fresh herbs, and white wine) was wonderful - we all enjoyed it.

Well, it's time to go make our traditional Sunday morning pancakes for my family - everyone is getting up now. I'm thinking banana chocolate chip today.

Hope you enjoyed your food and cooking this week!