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!

Easy & Delish: One Dish!

You can cook all of this meal in one dish!...that doesn't include the containers for prep though :) I got everything ready ahead of time this afternoon when I had about 15 minutes. When it came time to cook, it was super easy to assemble the meal!

One Skillet, Greek Lemon Chicken with Mixed Grains 

For the chicken...get 1# of chicken breasts 

Mix your marinade of:

4 garlic cloves, minced 

The juice of 1-2 lemons +4 Tablespoons (I used 6 T of pre-squeezed lemon juice today!) 

1 T oregano

1/2 t table salt 

--> marinate your chicken for about 2 hours at least or overnight 

For the rice mixture:

1 small onion, chopped

1T oregano

2.5 c chicken broth

Grain of your choice, I did a mixture of pearled couscous, bulgur wheat and quinoa 

1/4 t salt 

Preheat oven to 350

Step 1

Heat 1.5 T olive oil in a large, oven proof skillet. Brown chicken on both sides. Once browned, set aside.

Wipe pan down with a paper towel to remove the blackened bits.  

Step 2

Add ~1T of olive oil to the pan, over medium/high heat. Add onions and stir until translucent.

Step 3

Add rice mixture (all remaining ingredients) to the pan and stir. Bring to boiling. Remove from heat, place browned chicken on top of the rice then cover the dish with the lid. 

Step 4

Put into oven. Bake approximately 30 minutes covered then another 10 minutes or so uncovered, until the liquid has evaporated and the grains are tender. 

Enjoy! 

DELISH Weeknight Dinner

I know, I know, I must be CRAZY to have friends over for dinner on a weeknight with 2 kiddos under 2.5 year old BUT I still do! I love having weeknight dinner parties, despite how crazy they might become (like tonight, W was all over the place with his toddler-ness). It's great to spend time with friends who are just glad to get together and enjoy good food. Which brings me back to the point of this post - DELICIOUS FOOD!

My neighbor shared this pork crock pot recipe and boy was it amazing; it's one of my most favorite pork crock pot recipes to date: Balsamic Pork. I served it with Hawaiian rolls, the au jus from the crock pot and golden yams (just like sweet potatoes, maybe better! but golden like Yukon gold potatoes, plays a trick on your eyes) and a garden salad. We finished our meal with  Triple Berry Pretzel Pie finished (no baking!) with freshly whipped cream - yum!

Happy cooking!

Balsamic Pork
2# boneless pork shoulder (sirloin roast)
kosher salt, to taste
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t red pepper flakes
1/3 c chicken broth
1/3 c balsamic vinegar
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T honey

- combine salt, garlic powder, red pepper flakes & then rub/season the pork with them
- place pork in the crock pot
- combine broth, vinegar & worcestershire sauce then pour over the pork
- drizzle honey over the pork
- set crock pot on low & cook for 6 - 8 hours (or on high for 4 hours)
- pork should be fork-tender and easily shredded with two forks
- serve with juice from the crock pot

Golden Yam!

Baking Golden Yams - use the same method as you do for sweet potatoes:
- wrap in foil
- bake at 425 for approximately 1 hour until tender
- serve with butter and brown sugar

No Bake Triple Berry Pretzel Pie
Crust:
2 c pretzel crumbs
1/8 c sugar
1 stick of butter
Filling:
1 c water
1/2 c sugar
2 T cornstarch
1/2 package of strawberry jello
2 c sliced strawberries
1 c blueberries
1 c blackberries

For the crust: crush pretzels into smallish-sized crumbs. Mix with sugar and melted butter. Press into a 9-inch pie plate and refrigerate for 2 hours to set.

For the filling: mix water, 1/2 c sugar and cornstarch in a medium saucepan. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute then remove from heat. Stir in gelatin until dissolved. Refrigerate the mixture for about 10 minutes, stirring every 2-3 minutes so that the mixture thickens but isn't set.

Once the mixture has cooled, fold in the fruit. Pour the mixture into the crust and chill for at least 2 hours.

Whip your cream and serve each slice with a dollop on top! Yum!!!

Summer Veggie Goodness

A few nights ago, I made a dinner that just didn't quite deliver on the flavor I had anticipated. Feeling slightly defeated, I was inspired to try something new that would utilize the amazing produce we had gotten at the farmers market the previous weekend. I now give you...drumroll please...

Summer Zucchini, Corn & Red Pepper Salad!

This is an amazing side dish (we ate grilled sockeye salmon with it) or you could even make it your main dish.

The original recipe inspiration came from foodiecrush.com via Pinterest (original link: here). She recommends serving the squash and corn raw...I don't like to eat my vegetables that way :) so I lightly sauteed them to soften them up and give them a little more flavor.

Here is my version of the recipe.

2 squash (either 1 zucchini & 1 yellow squash OR I used a light green and a yellow zucchini squash, yum!), ends cut off
2 cobs of corn (shucked and with the corn kernels sliced off of the cob)
2 T olive oil (separated)
1 package of mixed greens or arugula
1/4 c very thinly sliced red bell pepper
1 oz of goat cheese (I bought this then forgot to use it...I can't wait to try this again WITH the goat cheese...if I remember :)

For the dressing:
1 T chopped fresh basil (do not use dried, it will not give you the flavor you want)
1/2 C olive oil
3 T fresh lemon juice
1 t dijon mustard
1 t minced garlic
- chop some additional fresh basil to use as a topping at the end (if you love fresh basil like I do, you'll want this for extra flavor!)

Steps:

1. get a vegetable peeler and peel your zucchini squash into thin ribbons strips
2. shuck your corn & cut the kernels off of the cob
3. heat 1 T of oil in a medium sized skillet, add a little freshly ground salt and pepper to the oil. once the oil is warm, add the zucchini ribbons and toss with the oil until they become slightly transulcent in color. Remove from heat, place in a bowl. I use salad tongs to gently turn/toss the ribbons. 
4. heat the additional 1 T of oil in the same skillet, add a little freshly ground salt and pepper to the oil. Add the corn and sautee about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, place in a separate bowl from the zucchini.
5. slice your red bell pepper, set aside
6. Make your Dressing (this makes too much dressing for these 2 servings, it is great to save and use later on a salad!)

Dressing - mix all ingredients together!

Making your salad:

- put your mixed greens on a plate

- then top with the zucchini ribbons

- next spoon corn on top of the ribbons

- place the red pepper slices on top of the corn

- finish by drizzle about 1 T of dressing on top of your salad

- then crumble goat cheese on your salad

- top with a few more pieces of chopped basil

Then VOILA! Enjoy your fresh summer salad masterpiece!!!

Potato Salad Perfection

I've never met a potato I don't like (potato chip, French fries and baked potatoes included)! I have however, met plenty of potato salads I don't like! They can be too mayonnais-y, too mustard-y, too yellow, you get the picture!

This potato salad recipe from Smitten Kitchen is fabulous! I've made it twice now and it will be my go-to recipe from here on out!

The recipe for Rosanne Cash's potato salad can be found here: link to original recipe.

Here are my recommendations to make this recipe a home run:

1) I definitely recommend making the potato salad a few hours before you need to serve it, so the dressing has time to season the potatoes properly! 

2) I'm always a fan of using fresh herbs but you can use dried dill in this recipe. Reduce the amount to about 1.5 tsp (or the amount you deem appropriate!) 

3) definitely use cornichons, it makes the flavor pop just a little bit more than classic dill pickles! What are cornichons? They're very baby size pickles that pack a much greater tart/vinegar flavor punch. You can get them in the pickle aisle - I've used brands from Fresh Market and Trader Joe's. 

4) I don't normally like raw celery but it is so delicious in this recipe; definitely do not skip it!