I think I’m beating Rachel Ray’s 30 minute meals-easily.

Honestly, I’ve been getting full meals on the table in under 20 of those 60 second wonders.

Last night:  glazed carrots, baked pork chops and tater tots.

everything went “into the pool“.  Mixed a bag of baby carrots with some cinnamon, ginger, splenda and added a splash of lemon juice.  sprayed a pan threw in the veggies and sprayed them with some evoo.  covered them with foil and stuck them in one oven at 375.

Coated the pork chops in some panko crumbs mixed with a maple montreal seasoning rub and put them on a prepared pan and then spritzed them with evoo.

They went in a 450 oven with the tater tots that I sprayed with the evoo and then sprinkled some paprika and cumin over.

Okay, the carrots were in for 30 minutes, but the rest were done to perfection in 20.  If I had been okay with crunchier carrots then yes, I would have had the 20 minutes easy-peasy.

The rest of the week went along the same lines:  grilled boneless and skinless chicken thighs with potato, garlic and onion packets with some spinach salad on the side.

Grilled salmon brushed with some teriyaki sauce and served over my version of True Foods kale salad with some toasted roasted garlic bread.

Turkey burgers on some toasted pretzel rolls with a Dijon sauce and then I put out spinach, tomato slices, avocado slices, red onion and pepper jack or cheddar cheese for those who wanted it. (this was our grandkid night).

One night was our date day-so I didn’t get to create anything at all-except a letter to this “fine dining” place that told them it was anything but and it was just fortunate we had a gift card for most of it.  But the extra $24 and the 62 mile round trip had my panties in a knot.

Guess what?  Letter did a lot!  The operations manager called, apologized and said that even though we lived far away he put our name on a permanent list and we’d be his guest!

DH said, “Great!  We’ll use it for your birthday and see a movie!”

My response?  “Hey, I don’t like red meat, I don’t want to sit in the movies and see something mediocre-it’s my birthday!  Let’s save it for yours”

Probably shot myself in the foot on that one, but I’m already getting the chance to spend some time with Aidan at his kindergarten field trip to a local farm that has a restaurant.  I’m looking forward to this trip-what could be better for a foodie than getting to see great food being grown right in front of me?