Sister time

My sister has been coming to visit weekly now because I am a perfect stop in between work and her masters class. We normally cook dinner and watch the biggest loser. Today we were quite proud of what we accomplished, giddy actually. I had frozen tilapia, frozen green beans and didnt know what to do. So I used my allrecipes app on my phone and came up with this:

Garlic Parmesan Orzo

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Garlic-Parmesan-Orzo/Detail.aspx

 AND

Broiled Tilapia Parmesan

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Broiled-Tilapia-Parmesan/Detail.aspx

Impressive, right!?! We even decided to get fancy with our plates! I also wanted to share some of the little things that we tweaked and some of my favorite things that I used while cooking. 

Defrosting food in the microwave is a pet peeve of mine so we put the frozen fish in a plastic bag and filled the sink with hot water. It only took about 10-15 minutes to thaw. Both recipes called for a lot of butter and we got away with only using half of the called amount for the orzo. Next we swapped out the parsley and used a trader joes favorite:

I think these 1tsp cubes are awesome! They also have them in cilantro and garlic.

The fish was almost done, and we forgot about the green beans. Luckily my fancy steamer had them ready in just 3 minutes in the microwave. (Trader Joes frozen green beans taste very close to fresh!)

 

 Props to pampered chef...and sister talk!