March 20, 2021

WEEKLY MENU 03.21.21

We’re rocking through the Weekly Menu 03.21.21 with Cuban, Mexican and Italian inspired meals. Our family favorite Lenten meal finishes the work week!

It’s an international celebration during the Weekly Menu 03.21.21. The mojo marinade on the pork loin is a Cuban based orange and lime juice recipe that makes for a fabulous, succulent dinner. We’re heading to Asia with Thai Beef Salad on Monday. Mexican, of course, graces the dinner table on Tuesday, and the OG Baby Boy is guest “chefing” on Thursday with an Italian classic (and his personal favorite dish), Pasta Carbonara.

Thai Beef is a recipe from one of my favorite celebrity chefs: Christopher Kimball. He has a newish series on Create called Milk Street, and it is fabulous, probably because it’s exactly how I like to cook. Wonderfully tasty food prepped in the easiest way possible. Previously, Kimball was on Cook’s County. I enjoy that show too (honestly, there isn’t a cooking show that I’ll skip, given the time) but they treat food kind of like it’s rocket science. Milk Street pares it down to the steps that matter, and as a busy woman, I appreciate that.

Carbonara is the original breakfast for dinner meal.

Carbonara (Italian: [karboˈnaːra]) is an Italian pasta dish from Rome^[1][2] made with egg, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper.
There are many theories for the origin of the name carbonara, which is likely more recent than the dish itself.^[4] Since the name is derived from carbonaro (the Italian word for ‘charcoal burner‘), some believe the dish was first made as a hearty meal for Italian charcoal workers.^[1] In parts of the United States, this etymology gave rise to the term “coal miner’s spaghetti”. It has even been suggested that it was created as a tribute to the Carbonari (‘charcoalmen’) secret society prominent in the early, repressed stages of Italian unification in the early 19th century.^[6
Wikipedia

So what are we talking? Yep. Eggs and Bacon. This is one of those meals that is so simple that it can be difficult to get right. The OG Baby Boy offered to make it after he had a (very) disappointing restaurant version recently. And I’m always up for a night off, so… dinner Thursday!

Recipe revamp~

We’re changing up a couple of our regular recipes during the Weekly Menu 03.21.21 with the Mojo Marinade, Sausage Noodle Bowl and the Fire Chicken. The mojo marinade is usually used on chicken breasts or pork chops before we grill them. This week we’re marinating a whole pork loin for a couple hours before baking it. We’ll start it out in the oven at a toasty 450 degrees, and roast until the outside gets a nice color on it, probably about half an hour. Then we’ll turn the oven to 375 degrees F to cook it through, for an hour to and hour and a half. Trust your Instant Meat Thermometer (affiliate links follow – see Disclaimer Page for details.) to tell you when it’s done.

We’re dumping the thin spaghetti out of the sausage noodle bowl for a low carb version of this soup-like meal. The Vegetti Spiral Slicer will get pressed into service. The zucchini noodles will boil in the pot for about 5 minutes in lieu of the pasta.

The Fire Chicken can bubble away in the Crockpot Saturday afternoon while we’re doing Saturday things. The shredded meat gets loaded on top of baked, crispy tater tots before we smother it with cheese and a sprinkle of jalapenos. That’s a meal best served on the sheet pan in front of a good movie!