Meal Planning: Post 1

I love to cook...I however, do NOT like meal planning. However, meals must happen! :) Here are a few tips I employ each week (when I'm on top of things)...I have plenty of off weeks!

Last night we had a delicious dinner, that didn't look pretty (like most weeknight meals!). It was salmon cakes, baked sweet potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil and freshly squeezed orange juice, steamed broccoli. I experimented with the salmon cake recipe to see if I could omit the bread crumbs and I substituted crushed almonds/cashews. It gave extra flavor to the salmon cakes. See this post here, for the recipe (link here).

What my 7-day meal planning looks like:
2 Days of a Break for Me:

• 1 Takeout Meal
• 1 Meal Out

5 Days of Cooking:

• 2 Crockpot Meals
• 1 - 2 Casseroles + salad
• 1 "Fresh" meal

How I Prepare for the Week of Meals:

1. Online Grocery Shop/Order Process - either via Walmart Grocery Pick-Up or Kroger Clicklist (I usually place my order on Saturday for Sunday pick-up or place it Sunday for Saturday pick-up). This saves me so much time in driving, parking, getting the kids out, making it through the store...STRESS, STRESS, STRESS! You get the picture ;)
2. Prep as much as I can before the week starts, such as:
1. Wash all fresh fruit & vegetables and let it dry. It's so nice to know everything I'm putting into the refrigerator is clean and ready to go!
2. I chop/store as many of the same ingredients as I can - if I know I'll be using yellow squash in several dishes, I'll slice it, put it in the food processor, etc and store until using it that week
3. For any grains, you can go ahead and make a large batch of it and add it to dishes/reheat the night you're serving them
3. Try not to stress over a complicated meal on a weeknight - keep it simple. Let a fresh, green salad be your key side dish every night. If you vary the toppings and dressings, it will seem new each night.
4. Rotation of Favorites - I typically don't repeat the EXACT same meal more than 1x per month. I have a rotation of favorites that I do a variation on but don't do a precise repeat. I'll share more recipes through more of my meal planning posts.
5. STUFF each recipe as full with veggies as you can! My favorite go-to secret veggie is yellow squash. Due to its color and texture once cooked, it's incredibly easy to disguise in almost any dish.
6. Let your slow cooker take care of the meat! I absolutely hate cooking meat during the weeknights, it takes too long and it's too easy to ruin (if you get distracted, etc.). You can put almost any cut of meat into the crockpot and its perfectly ready by suppertime!

Rotation of Favorites, Ideas*:

• Pasta - boiled noodles, any sauce (red, white, pesto, olive oil), topped with meat or roasted veggies
• Vegetable noodles with your choice of sauce, meat and vegetables
• Chicken casseroles - chicken poppyseed, chicken spectacular, chicken soup casserole, chicken cordon bleu
• Casseroles - taco casserole, chile rellenos, rigatoni pasta bake
• Baked salmon - I like to get the large cut at Costco and it acutally can be used for 2 meals! The first, you bake or grill the whole fish fresh (portioned of course) and then save at least 1/3 to use for the next recipe, the best salmon cakes you'll ever make! 3 easy ways to prep & bake in oven: cover salmon with pesto & bake, cover salmon with apple butter & bake, cover salmon with lemon juice, salt & pepper then slice lemon slices and place on top for baking.
• Salmon cakes - of course, you can use salmon from the packets, if you are in a hurry or didn't buy fresh salmon that week.
• Lasagna - traditional, chicken or veggie
• Slow-Cooker Meat made with any variety of sauces: BBQ, rotel, balsamic blend, Italian Dressing, kahlua; over any variety of meat: pork tenderloin, turkey tenderloin, chicken breasts
• Slow-Cooker Meals: beef stew, chili (white bean with chicken or red beans with beef)
• Single Sheet Pan Meals: chicken, green beans & potatoes, paella
• One-Pot Meals: featuring pasta of your choice, vegetables of your choice, meat of your choice (optional) basil, olive oil, chicken broth, salt & pepper.

*These are the ones I can think of right now, while I have a quiet moment to type this out :) I'm sure I will remember more later, when I look through my recipe books!

Side Dish Options:

• Roasted vegetables: thinly sliced zucchini, yellow squash tossed with olive oil, salt & pepper
• Baked Sweet Potatoes
• Baked Potatoes
• Sauteed vegetables: sliced zucchini and yellow squash with diced onions
• Green beans, boiled in chicken broth
• Steamed broccoli

More to come!!! But now, it's bedtime! :)

Salmon Cakes

I've been working on omitting unnecessary gluten and processed foods from our diet. I can tell I feel better from doing this. I'm not a purist by any means but I can tell I feel better from reducing the amounts I consume. Additionally, I am realizing how much I rely on cheese for snacks and in recipes. It's become an interesting challenge to find substitutes that taste just as delicious.

Last night, I substituted chopped almonds/cashews for breadcrumbs in my salmon cakes recipe and it was delicious!

Here is the recipe:

2 packets of pink salmon, wild caught
2 T BBQ sauce
1 T Worcestershire
1 whole egg
1 egg white
1/2 cup of finely chopped almonds/cashews (or really any nut blend you prefer)
1/2 small bell pepper or 2 snack peppers, diced in small pieces
1/2 c carrots
1/2 zucchini or yellow squash
1/2 small onion
1 T diced garlic
*I found this really cool mixed super foods pouch at Trader Joe's the other week. I added about 2 T of that this time too.

Mix salmon, bbq sauce, Worcestershire, 1 egg and 1 egg white in a medium size mixing bowl. Set aside, it's time to prepare the vegetables.

Process your onion in a food processor, then heat 1T of olive oil in a skillet. Add garlic and onion to the pan and stir until fragrant and slightly glossy.

Process your remaining vegetables in the food processor and add to the garlic/onion mixture. Cook until slightly softened.

Once the vegetables are ready, add to your salmon mixture. Ideally, you will be able to chill this mixture at least 1 hour until fully chilled. This will make it a lot easier to form your salmon patties.

Get out one 12-cup muffin pan. Spray with cooking spray. This next step is optional but I feel it gives the salmon patties a better texture and bake. Get a salad plate and pour about 1 c of cornmeal onto it. Form your salmon cake, roll in the cornmeal/pat cornmeal onto it and then place into a greased muffin cup.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 20 - 25 minutes until you see a slight browning on top. Serve with more BBQ sauce or ketchup.

You can also cook these on the stove in a skillet, in vegetable or olive oil but again, it makes them a little heavier of a dish.

Cupcake Bouquets: Don't Just Don't

The other day, my friend asked if I could make one dozen cupcakes for an event she was hosting. They were going to use them for a cupcake bouquet. I looked at the design and thought, sure! I can do that. Then I got the idea, that I should make a couple myself, for an event I was attending that same evening.

Here's the original design inspiration and I actually read the blog post for the "how to" to make sure I got it right (which I don't normally do). It looked innocent enough (link here):

What I found though was that this project was quite involved...sooooo...even though they turned out quite nicely. I've decided to share my 13 reasons for why you should NEVER make a cupcake bouquet LOL: 

1. Don't. Just don't do it!
2. Making & icing cupcakes from scratch is enough. Period. The cupcakes don't need a display or anything cutesy. 
3. You'll go to Michael's and spend $30 on supplies you don't want to buy but at this point you're committed to make the silly thing!
4. Once I arrived home, I laid out all of the suppliers and think, huh, this thing may be more involved to make than I thought. 
5. Prep cups, tissue, glue gun and placement. 
6. Glue everything: the foam to the pot, the cups to the foam and prepare the toothpicks...oh.so.many. toothpicks. 
7. Think: am I really doing this? 
8. Start the assembly of the cupcake bouquet. 
9. Stuff tissue paper. 
10. Stuff more tissue paper. 
11. Stuff even more tissue paper. 
12. As I open the refrigerator door, one mini cupcake falls off and I say: Oh Heck! and just eat it!
13. Remember: Sprinkles are God's gift to bakers (they cover any icing errors!)
14. Warning: this bouquet is as dangerous as a porcupine due to the excessive amounts of toothpicks. You will get pricked. 
15. As the project was coming to a close, I thought: huh, I haven't cursed at all during this proecess and it was the perfect excuse to! Right at that time, Cory walked in and said: these are the best damn cupcakes I've ever tasted! and, he said I could quote him on that ;)
16. Finally, transporting the silly things was STRESSFUL and I drove granny-speed for several spots of our trip, just hoping it would stay assembled!!!

Fortunately, they both stayed together and we did not have any further cupcake casualties! Everyone thought they were real flower bouquets and not make of cupcakes. The best part was that they were enjoyed for their taste!