Well, it's been a couple of long weeks without a lot of cooking at madonia.kitchen.  My garbage cans have been filled with Chipotle and Portillo's bags and a variety of pizza boxes.  I've eaten all of the Progresso soup that was left in my pantry and I've binged on cheese and crackers several days in a row.  Oh, and then there were the Hershey Kisses...

As you can see, the kitchen has been kind of slow lately.  This weekend, I did manage to make some old favorites. including Egg Mentz-Muffins with sausage and chive (no cheese this weekend kids) and Chicken Parm (because that had plenty of cheese).  I prepped some garlic, shallots, yellow onions, and parsley for recipes that I'm making during the week, washed some leeks, carrots, and celery, and made about 100 mini chicken and sausage meatballs.  Almost forgot the tarragon, parsley, mustard, and olive oil marinade I made for some chicken thighs.  Now, that is a funny story...

I pulled out what I thought was a bottle of fancy dijon mustard from the pantry.  It looked weird, but the expiration date was late 2018, so I thought it was me.  I added it to my marinade and then left it on the side to make a salad dressing.  When I went to make the salad dressing, I realized it was a bottle of truffle cream pasta sauce that I got as a gift for Christmas.  Luckily, I saved the marinade, but it was too late for the chicken thighs.  If THAT recipe turns out, I'll definitely post it! Hey Siri, remind me to make an appointment with the eye doctor...

Here is this week's menu:

• Lemon and harissa chicken with roasted asparagus
• Italian wedding soup (thus the mini meatballs!)
• Roasted romaine salad with oven dried cherry tomatoes
• Tarragon and garlic chicken thighs (keep your fingers crossed for this one!)

I'm also practicing my salmon cooking techniques, so hopefully I'll have a successful recipe to share soon.

So, other than making a mess and washing a ton of dishes as you see above, I also spent some time updating the website.  I hope that you like the new look and feel and that mobile users find the site more easy to navigate.  Please be patient as I'm trying to make some final tweaks and fix some broken links.  Would LOVE to get your feedback on the site and if you find something that isn't quite right, let me know.  Y'all can be my QA testers!

Have a good week everyone!