End of the Month!

You might notice a pattern, that at the beginning of the month, I tend to post, and towards then end, I seem to disappear. My mom said to my sister that we must be starving because she hadn’t seen a new post in a while. My sister reminded her, it’s the end of the month and that I had spent my budget! Its true. Joel & I do try to stick to a budget of 200 dollars a month on groceries. We haven’t gone over more than 100 dollars before, but I do seem to always go over at least 50. The last week of the months, Joel usually lives off of protein shakes and skimpy burritos, while I drive to visit my family and eat with them! Haha. Now you know why The Red Plate is empty at the end of the month – because it literally is!

Cheese Breads & Pastas

I mentioned in the French Onion Soup post that we really liked the cheese bread. Here is a group of the various cheese breads and pastas I have made recently.

Basil Pesto Pasta

The first time I had pesto was when I was eating at UNO’s (a pizza restaurant) and we ordered a pesto pizza. I don’t think any of us liked it. So I thought I didn’t like pesto. Then Joel ate pesto pasta at my aunt’s restaurant and it was really good! We all loved it. So then I thought about it. What is in pesto? Its basil, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil, all things that I really like, so how could I not like it? I’m not sure what went wrong with the pesto at UNO’s, but I was up for making it myself.

I had some slight troubles with my tools, since I didn’t have a food processor, I tried using a blender, which doesn’t work as well. So this was a much chunkier pesto than it should have been. But overall it was amazing. I loved the strong taste of garlic and basil! I loved the pasta!

Basil Pesto Cheese Bread

This was probably my favorite of our cheese breads. I loved all the flavors, of the tomatoes, pesto, and seasonings! This one was great!

First the basil

Then the tomatoes

Then the cheese, basil and salt

Amazing!

Chicken Spaghetti with Cream of Chicken

I just tried using cream of chicken rather than cream of mushroom. Overall, it tasted ok, but I think I like the cream of mushroom better. Now I know!

Cheddar Cheese Bread

This one is still good, but probably my lease favorite. I just love the taste of mozzarella cheese the most on the breads.

Pad Thai

Joel introduced me to Pad Thai when we were eating out during out honeymoon. I had never had any Thai food before, but I loved it! We have since then eating Pad Thai about 3 times! I wanted to learn to make it, because I liked it so much! I actually made two go’s at it. The first time was way too salty! Fish oil is so salty and gross, and I didn’t realize that. Plus it makes you want to throw up when you smell it. I wonder if people in Thailand like the smell. I can’t see how anyone could!
As for the second try, I added caramelized onions, and it was actually a little too sweet. But it is much nicer to eat a meal that is too sweet than too salty, at least for us. Both were very close to tasting like a version of Pad Thai. So Joel was really proud of me for that. It did take me a long time to look up the many different ways to cook it and to make my decisions of how I would. Overall, I think I know how to do it just right whenever we get the craving next.

Tomato Cheese Bread

This one is a good one. When we have the ingredients, we make this one often. Tomatoes just taste so good with mozzarella cheese, salt and basil when it is warm!

Soupy Chicken & Vegetable Pasta

I really liked this pasta. It really was like a soup, I might try adding flour to it to thicken it more, but it was very tasty.

I loved the vegetables, the green peppers were wonderful! We also really liked the shape of the noodles as well. I made this twice in a row because I liked it a lot and still had all the ingredients.

Broccoli Shrimp Pasta with Thick Garlic Sauce

Even though I did really like the pasta above, in general, I really prefer my pastas (and soups for that matter) to be thick. So I created this recipe out of some suggestions I found online. I joined together a think pasta sauce recipe with a garlic sauce recipe. It was the first time a sauce has been too thick for me! It had the consistency of mashed potatoes or gravy. But it tasted wonderful of course. It was certainly a sauce full of flavor! It basically consisted of the usual for me, butter, garlic, and onions! We will definitely make this again because it was really nice.