Green-Chile Chicken and Bean Stew

I've been in a mood about cooking lately. Can't bring myself to plan ahead. Not craving anything enough to really be excited about making it. The other thing is that I try to work with what's on sale and I guess the sales haven't been too helpful lately either. So... we've been ordering pizza and eating out a little more than usual.

I had a moment of semi-success with this recipe for Green-Chile Chicken and Pink Bean Stew though. I ran across it in Food & Wine, which is a pretty hoity toity magazine--I only started reading it this summer cuz my parents subscribe. Anyway, I swear this was the most useful issue of Food & Wine I've ever seen since they've got a feature on using canned beans. I love canned beans! Haha... So anyway I didn't think pink beans sounded very appetizing so I just used kidneys. And I had a semi-fail in that I forgot to buy garlic and accidentally bought jalapenos rather than green chiles. haha... so it came out super spicy. Still good though... we just ate it with a lot of rice. And then we ended up throwing a can of stewed tomatoes in to ease the fire a little more. And I even forgot to put in the lime every time I ate it.

Chicken Asparagus Pasta

I've been in the mood for a lighter dinner, craving veggies and all that. I felt like pasta, and asparagus was on sale so I googled "chicken asparagus pasta" and here's what I got. Kea thinks it's a little bland but I loved it. It is exactly what I've been in the mood for.

Papa John's Pan Pizza

This is a public service announcement. This pizza sucks. We love Papa John's and we went with this because of the current promotion (read: discount). It's weird. The crust around the edges is really good--crispy and flavorful, but the rest is just weird. I thought maybe it was undercooked because the middle just seemed soggier than usual. I think it was thicker. Kea said it reminded him of school pizza, but I think school pizza was better.

The flavor was also weird. I thought maybe the cheese went bad, but Kea thinks it was the sauce recipe that made it taste weird. It apparently does use a different sauce so maybe that's it. Not good.