It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for our fifth installment of What We Ate Wednesday for Jenn’s link party over at Peas and Crayons! So far we’ve had mushroom risotto stuffed peppers, blackened mahi-mahi, beans & macaroni and homemade pizza. We’ve made a lot of delicious meals since last week, but then we got preoccupied with painting our office stripes and ran out of food. For two days, we’ve been eating Froot Loops (<3) and frozen pizza, thinking this week’s meal wouldn’t happen. But thankfully Mike picked up some basics on his way home from work and we were able to whip up one of our go-to meals just before Wednesday was over!

This one is simple, black bean tacos.

Ingredients:

Can of black beans (we like Goya)

Taco shells (stand n’ stuff will make your life easier!)

Lettuce

Tomatoes

Cheese

Guacamole!

Sour Cream  (which I didn’t take a picture of)

Sometimes we throw in extras like rice, peppers and onions or some fish.

The great thing about this meal? The only cooking required is to heat up the beans and the shells!

I have always loved tacos, Mike not so much, but I really really love black bean tacos and so does he. The beans fill you up, add a lot of flavor and they’re good for you! I don’t miss the greasy orange stuff that always dripped out of the chop meat version you make with the seasoning packets. We originally got this idea after eating at Moe’s shortly after giving up meat and ordering the unanimous decision tacos. If you’ve never been to Moe’s, you must go. Though we have an ongoing debate around here about whether or not Chipotle is better…I will not reveal which side I am on, but I will say that I am in love with both!

I just realized I didn’t take a picture of my assembled taco, but head on over to Jenn’s for some more recipes (complete with pictures! :))

Yay another post for Jenn’s What I Ate Wednesday link party over at Peas and Crayons!

Last night (I guess this series should really be called “What we ate for dinner Tuesday”?), Mike made a variation of his grandfather’s pasta e fagioli recipe. Mike’s isn’t soupy at all, so we normally refer to it as beans and macaroni. In fact, today I had the leftovers for lunch and I ate it with a fork.

Okay so! The ingredients:

Half of a medium sized onion

2 cloves of garlic

1-2 stalks of celery

3 cans of cannellini beans (white kidney beans)

1/2 lb smallish pasta

1/2 can tomato sauce (15 ounce or so can)

Directions:

Put some olive oil in a pot, adding the onion and garlic. Cook until onions are clear and add 2 and a half cans of beans (with juice). As this cooks, stir and smash beans, add half of a can of tomato sauce and salt and pepper to taste. In a separate pot, boil water and add chopped celery until soft. Cook pasta and set aside. Once beans have condensed and are creamy, add remaining beans and juice into the pot, along with the chopped celery. Cook for an additional ten minutes or so. Add pasta to mixture, stir and done!

If you prefer the more traditional soupy route, when you add the celery to the bean mixture, add the water that it was cooked in as well.  Cook the pasta in the same mixture until soft.

We sort of forgot that we had What We Ate Wednesday in the middle of cooking this, so we didn’t take pictures along the way. Sorry about that, but it’s the end result that counts, right? 🙂

My first post for Jenn’s ‘What I Ate Wednesday’ link party was such a success (and fun) that we decided to do it again!

I know there are some vegetarians out there whose heads are currently spinning. You eat fish? Well, yes, kinda sorta. I have never really liked fish. I don’t like shrimp or even fried calamari. My dad is an avid fisher so there was always a lot of fish around when I was growing up.. and I hated it. But I like Mahi, it is the only fish that I like.

So why would I choose to not eat meat but to eat fish? Well for me it’s the “I don’t know what kind of life these animals lived” factor that ruins meat for me. We eat Mahi and Yellowfin caught by my father. It has roamed (swam?) the ocean and was no doubt killed humanely, since my father is a huge animal lover. What, did you think I was just born like this? I was raised to respect every animal out there as another life.  Growing up we rescued cats, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, turtles, ducks and I’m sure I’m missing some. Though I personally don’t think I could fish, I know my dad does it as humanely as possible.

So on to the menu!

Mahi filets…

The standard broccoli…

Some peppers and onions…

And perhaps my favorite food of all time, mashed potatoes…

We put some melted butter on the filets and sprinkled them with Phillip’s blackening seasoning…

Then we put the filets on the griddle that sits over the 5th burner on our stove. This griddle is fabulous. Cooks great, super easy to clean and convenient. We also have a $15 electric griddle we’ve used for years that works wonderfully.

(ps- please ignore the filthy burner in this picture, if you can even spot it. We had a spillage issue somewhere along the way…)

Mmm buttery goodness, I never said this was necessarily healthy 🙂

We added the peppers and onions, which we cooked for a little in a frying pan (somehow cause of dirty burner) to the skillet for a few minutes…

Then all done! We skip to Mike’s partially consumed plate because we were so anxious to eat that I forgot to take pictures…

I’m pretty sure we’re obsessed with blackening seasoning. We now use it on fries, veggies….practically everything!

Be sure to visit Jenn over at Peas and Crayons for some more cooking fun 🙂