In the Kitchen with Linda & Dinner Menu

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It was a good week in my kitchen last week. I only made dinners, though, nothing extra. None of the good stuff. lol

In the Kitchen with Linda & Dinner Menu

Past with meat sauce is a family favorite. That’s why it’s on the menu every week. And it’s a budget friendly meal. Especially if you get the meat on sale.

Plus, it’s good! And yes, I like a lot of parmesan cheese. lol Yes, this is the shelf stable parmesan. I would prefer the fresh, but my whole family likes a lot of parmesan. And that gets too expensive.

Tacos are another family favorite. Yes, that is a jar with restaurant taco sauce packets. lol When my husband goes out to lunch there sometimes, he brings his packets home.

When I bake potatoes, I like to bake extras for future meals. In this case, my mother and I had taco potatoes on taco night. “Planned over” baked potatoes make awesome fried potatoes, too!

I got whole pork loin on sale recently. This package ended up having to skinny pieces instead of one bigger one. So these pork “chops” are tiny. But so good. Nice and tender. If you don’t use a cast iron skillet, it’s great for cooking meat. It browns nicely.

I served the pork with rice, veggies, and rolls that my daughter brought home from the restaurant she works at. They are so good! I didn’t have rice. Just rolls for my carbs. lol

Rice is another thing I look to cook extra of for planned overs. On this day, I ended up spending several hours in the ER with my mother. When I got home, my husband had made stir fry. So planned overs make it easy for others to cook dinner, too!

Our local mini mart type store started selling ground bacon. They started mixing the ground bacon with hamburger for burgers. When I sent my husband to the store on Saturday to get some, they were out of the premade burgers. So I had him get them separately, and we mixed it ourselves. We used 2 pounds of hamburger to 1 pound of ground bacon.

We cooked them on the grill. Well, my husband did. lol As you can imagine, the extra fat from the bacon cause more flare ups. But we figured it would, so we were prepared. He cooked them on low, instead of medium. And had a water bottle on hand to calm the flare ups down.

The burgers were so good! So if you see ground bacon in your store, you should try it!

I served the burgers with a quick pasta salad. Yes, it in fact was one of those boxed pasta salads. They are quick, and surprisingly yummy. When I sliced the tomato for the burgers, I put the extra tomato in the salad.