September Dinners

Well, October's just about over so this is probably a good time to catch up on September dinners.  I've already shared what I made for the first week of September so this will be for the remaining three weeks of the month.  I did try out some new recipes, which I'll talk about with the corresponding photos.  I'm hesitant to try out new stuff because it seems like there are so many bad recipes out there now.  You know what I mean?  People who are all like "I'm not a cook but I pretend to be one on the internet."  Or those who take a perfectly good recipe and change up a couple of measurements and/or ingredients just so they can claim the recipe as their own.  Please stop.

Homemade chicken, broccoli, ziti.  Takes a long time to make, but so delicious.

Pork chops, mashed potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts.  I cooked the pork chops in the crock pot with diluted apple cider and I had piled some cut up apples in there as well.  I should have put the apples in later but I wasn't going to be home, so they went in early and turned into an applesauce of sorts over the pork chops.  Whatever, it was fine.  Everybody ate it.

Eggplant parm with pasta and garlic bread.  Maybe also a salad that I didn't photograph.

Chicken pot pie with mashed potatoes.  In order to save time, I typically use gravy from a jar in my chicken pies.  Our grocery store really doesn't have many options when it comes to gravy and I was kind of getting sick of what I'd been using so I looked up a homemade option (Pillsbury!) and it is sooooo much tastier.  It takes more work, but definitely worth it.

Chili in the crock pot.

Shaved steak and cheese sandwiches with grilled peppers and sliced tomatoes.

Greek salad with falafel.

Spaghetti squash with a side salad, which was basically whatever was left over from the Greek salad the night before.

I came across this recipe on IG.  It's the one pot cheesy taco orzo by Jo Cooks.  Except not all kids like melted cheese in their food so in our home, we add our own cheese at the end.   I was super skeptical that this would work out as I was cooking it because I had to wing it with some of the ingredients.  I didn't have enough of the taco skillet sauce so I used taco sauce instead.  I also used half as much ground beef but added more orzo.  As it was cooking, I thought, "Well, there's always cereal for dinner if this doesn't work out."  And let's talk about cereal for dinner for a moment.  Growing up, we had cereal for dinner on occasion.  I don't remember how often but it was often enough that I remember it.  If I even mention cereal for dinner now, you would think was people to eat fried liver.

So anyway, this meal turned out really, really good.  Everyone gobbled it up and declared it the best thing ever.  Below is a photo of it with the cheese mixed in.  I also served cheese quesadillas with it.

Because the cheesy taco orzo was such a big hit, I decided to try the hamburger helper knock-off recipe from Jo Cooks and that was also a crowd pleaser.

Stuffed shells (spinach and cheese.)

Chicken fajitas with mexi-beans.

Tomato and spinach quiche, with potatoes.  I added the leftover peppers and onions from the fajitas to the potatoes.

Pulled pork sandwiches.

I'm missing some weekend meals, but the above should give a good idea as to what we've been eating.  Friday night is always Pizza Night!