To experiment or not to experiment?

I've been really foody lately. In Tesa terms, foody means I've been getting creative in what I want to do with food. I do this mix and shake up of food because, let's face it, eating the same stuff over and over again gets boring! I like variety in my meals, and being as undecisive as I already am with food I need to shake it up a bit and get out of that little box.

The place I put most of my creativity in is my daughter's meals. I don't know why, but I love making her food fun, pretty and tastey. My husband said to me tonight.

"Why don't you be creative with -our- food too!?"

I thought I was, but really, lately i've just been following the recipes I choose, which isn't so bad. However, it hasn't left me to be more creative and on the fly with our dinners. I admit though, I'm not a chef so sometimes determining what flavors work together daunts me. This is why I watch a million food shows and read a lot of food sites and blogs. I gain my inspiration from them, and I always LOVE trying new recipes.

So tonight I made my daughter some turkey meatballs in granola. I added some carrots that I put in a food processor until it was fine and mixed it into the raw meat. I added some spices, a small dash of garlic, sea salt, and italian season. Then I put the meatballs into a mini baking dish (4 at a time) and added cheese on top.

I tested them, since there were plenty, to make sure they tasted good. By golly they weren't too bad! I was a little surprised by the sweetness of the granola though, but it was a cereal we'd bought. Maybe we'll try a different granola next time. My husband usually tests out all the little experiments I make for kidlette and he thought it was pretty tastey too. So SCORE for the mommy!

I baked it on 350 in the oven. How long? I don't remember!

Then earlier hubby and I shared a fruit parfait, because I was hungry and it was on the menu for breakfast. The only problem with that is, I forgot about it at breakfast when he made his huevos rancheros. Woops! I never said I was a morning person! I have to say, I'm not too fond of greek yogurt, but with the right fruit/granola/yogurt ratio I can dig it in a parfait. So I guess it's time for me to up the bar and start experimenting a bit more on dinner.

Fruit Parfait.

Then there was dinner that hubby cooked. Grilled steaks with red wine butter and some sweet potatoe fries! At first he couldn't quite get the red wine butter and had to scratch the first try. Second try came  out a little better than the first. We'll keep trying though to get it right. I'm sure we'll be using it again in the future. He had a bad cooking night tonight, the poor man had butter fingers and kept dropping stuff. It's alright though. We all have bad nights! I know I do! So without further ado, a delicious photo of dinner: