Dinner Nouveau

Ok, I have to brag on something. I have cooked dinner four nights in row! Yay me! I'm sure some of you are thinking, geez not much to brag about, but really with me, this deserves a little bragging. I'm generally a "fixer" not a cook. I chop, heat, and steam. This is the extent of my cooking. This is not because I don't like to cook, but more because let's face it, by the time I get home my tummy just can't wait. In addition, because we try to eat relatively healthy and I'm not cuisinely creative, we tend to get in rut. In fact, let's examine the rut more closely:

A Monday: grilled chicken, steamed veggies and salad.
A Tuesday: steak, steamed veggies and salad.
A Wednesday: grilled fish, steamed veggies and salad.
A Thursday: grilled pork, steamed veggies and wait for it...salad.

Well, this week I put a stop to it and have made a strategic effort. This is due to my husband's cry for help. He asked my mastermind alliance with keeping on track dietwise during the day. You can't ignore a cry for help right? So I realized that this might due to aforementioned Rut. He's eating poorly during the day because he's eating dull food at night. Kind of like how the Amish go crazy at Rumspringer maybe? Anyway, I digress. I visited one of my new favorite sites: http://www.pioneerwoman.com/ to get inspired. Here's what I came up with the week:

Monday Nouveau: baked fish seasoned and dusted with oat flour, green beans*, and roasted garlic and new potatoes*.
Tuesday Nouveau: stir fry (from scratch - big step)
Wednesday Nouveau: baked chicken, left over green beans*, and a salad (but it was special as it had left over mushrooms from the stir fry which makes it completely different from all the boring salads we have had before). Oh, and I have to tell you that I actually came up with the baked chicken recipe by myself. Can you believe it? As it was all I had and I was trying to not be boring, I crushed Triscuits, mixed in italian spices and coated chicken in a butter garlic sauce. Not the healthiest chicken, but absolutely delicious.
Thursday Nouveau: as I type, a delicous homemade beef stew is bubbling in the kitchen - let's keep our fingers crossed.

*not your ordinary green beans and potatoes. I have decided that I can cook better using pictorial recipes such as found on Pioneer Woman. The reason for this is, I'm always getting to a certain step in a recipe and wonder...is it supposed to look like that? For an analytical always asking questions, pictures are confirmation that yes, I'm headed in the right direction.

So far so good. Oh, except for the small mistake in the stir fry where I used pickled baby corn instead of regular. Oops. Who knew there would be more than one kind of baby corn? It was just a little too much twang for Joey and I so we ate around all baby corn. Lesson learned: check the label on baby corn.

If anyone has recommendations on ways to jazz up healthy meals, please let me know. I need all the help I can get!

And sorry, no pictures of hair yet. Camera's out of batteries. Just know I look like Katie Holmes. Kidding. Totally kidding. It's just me with a slightly blunt haircut.