Meal Planning = Fun?

Looky at what I made today! I happened to stumble upon some meal plan templates during my blog hopping today (I wasn't looking for one), and five minutes later I had my very own.

I love it. I want a little easel to hold this... and maybe a different frame, but hey, this is a frame we had stashed in the basement. Literally, I downloaded the template for free here, printed it, grabbed the frame, and put it together in five minutes or less. I love LOVE that with the template behind the glass I can write my meal plan on it with dry erase markers.

I had to run to the Target anyway so I stopped in the home office section and found these beauties. 

Is it weird that when I saw this package of 8 double sided dry erase markers in 16 colors that I clapped my hands with glee? Yes? Oh.

I'm OK with that.

We were pretty good about eating meals at home for a while, but slowly we've fallen back into old habits of eating out 3-4 meals a week. We realized that we're eating out with friends on Friday and Saturday nights, then usually going out or picking up take out once during the week, and then there is the occasional lunch. It doesn't sound so bad, but we all know eating at home is healthier, saves money, and the food is just better (we know where it comes from). My goal is to have a plan for dinners each night of the week, and fill out my meal plan each Sunday. Doing this should save me a ton of time because I will be more prepared with a solid list to go to the grocery store each week (I heart my Grocery iQ app). Also, it will save me the stress and time spent trying to decide each day what I'm going to cook for dinner with the ingredients we have, or having to run to the store again. Now the challenging part will be keeping it up... but I have high hopes. The best part about meal planning is that it will help me be more creative with meals and trying new recipes. Why haven't I done this before? Well, I have half heartedly... meal planning is not a new concept, I just feel like I finally have my act together!

So now that I'm all set up, here is this week's plan (I've linked recipes if I found them online):

Monday: Fillet Mignon wrapped in bacon with roasted asparagus and couscous (today is a special occasion, we don't have fillets often)
Tuesday: Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken with brown Jasmine Rice and salad
Wednesday: Slow Cooker Green Chili Pork Tacos
Thursday: Left over Baked Ravioli (defrosted) with salad
Friday: PIZZA, my go-to wheat pizza dough is here
Saturday: Eat out, or leftover tacos
Sunday: Chili with Pumpkin Cornbread. I'm going to re-attempt this chili...

I'm pretty excited! I should have plenty of leftovers for lunches and to freeze. I may start blogging my meal plans each week... hmm, we'll see. So, are you a planner? What's on your menu this week? Really, I want to know!

This post is linked up to these link parties:
Just a Girl's Show and Share Day

 

Revamping Our Dinner Menu

A couple of weeks ago I felt like boycotting cooking. I was so tired of our regular go-to recipes that I desperately asked for easy recipe suggestions through my facebook status. I only got a couple of suggestions, unfortunately. So I began a search on my favorite cooking (and other life stuff) blog, The Pioneer Woman and her recipe site Tasty Kitchen, and I found some keepers! Here are the ones I've tried so far that I recommend:

Baked Honey Mustard Chicken by wasntmesb. We really liked this dish, the sauce is Yum-O. I served it over brown Jasmine Rice with sweat peas. I'll definitely be making this again.

Baked Raviolli by Amy Lynn

Slow Cooker Green Chili Pork Tacos by mcmom are next on my list from Tasty Kitchen, I can't wait to try these! I know, not quite a recommendation since I haven't made them yet, but they seem to be a TK user favorite.

Last week Jessica Seinfeld was on Oprah for the release of her latest cook book and shared some recipes. The one that stood out to me as one I wanted to try was her Crock Pot Lasagna. I had never heard of making lasagna in a crock pot before! I made this last week for guests and it was a hit. I did change up this recipe a bit.. I added beef, used less ricotta, used only 1 heaping Tbsp of oregano (instead of two, since the comments said 2 was too much), halved the salt, and used less red pepper - though I think next time I'd use the full amount. 

Have you tried a new recipe lately? If you have recommendations please put them in the comments! I'm always looking for good, easy, yummy recipes... and if they are quick AND easy, then that's even better :).

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! I'm so behind... I still need to run to the store to get candy to hand out tonight, and a strand of halloween lights. Our porch light is not next to our door, but on the other side of the overhang (does that make sense?) so our doorway is always dark. I'm hoping I can find cute lights to hang around our front door!

Last weekend we had some friends over to carve pumpkins and have a game night. Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures. I mulled some wine and I think it was a hit - I had to make more!

I'd definitely make this again, but I think I'd cut the sugar in half. Here is the recipe, which I got from here.

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles dry red wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon)
• 1 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (about 3 oranges)
• 2 more oranges (one to float on top, and one for garnish wedges)
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 4 cinnamon sticks
• 4 whole cloves

Directions:
Serves 6-8... sort of... it really depends if you want your guests to have a taste, or a bunch. I ended up doubling this recipe.

Squeeze the oranges to get 1 cup of juice. I'm sure you could get away with using store-bought juice, but the pulp floating around is what's kind of neat about mulled wine; it's more rustic this way. And oranges are in season.

Pour in the wine, add orange juice, stir in the sugar, and add the ground spices. Float the cinnamon sticks and whole cloves on top. Slice one of the oranges in rings, and float the rings on top.
Cover and cook on high for 2 hours, or on low for 4. You want the wine to get as hot as a traditional hot beverage. Ladle into mugs, and serve with a fresh orange wedge. When serving, leave the lid off and the crockpot on "low."

Our carved pumpkins

We had fun carving pumpkins, fishing out the pumpkin seeds (which I totally ruined by making them WAY too salty), and laughing at each other's carving faces. Apparently carving a pumpkin is serious business. No eye blinking!

OK, I better get going before all the good candy is gone. Have a great Halloween night! I leave you with my favorite Halloween song (in my most evil scientist voice), the Monster Mash.

The not so pretty, yet tasty Rum Cake

This week is John's birthday week! For weeks I asked what kind of cake he wanted me to make for him, and he finally decided on Rum Cake. So here's a picture of the not so great looking, but very moist and tasty Golden Rum Cake I made (minus the nuts). We found the recipe on allrecipes.com. I had a hard time getting it out of the bundt pan. I have no idea what the deal is lately... the last few bundt cakes I've made have not come out well and it doesn't seem to matter how well I grease and flour the darn thing. Oh, and just in case you're wondering this is no where near clean, I made it according to the recipe since I didn't want to experiment with his birthday cake!

Forgive the bad picture... it was taken with my iPhone because it's just handier than digging out the "real" camera.

The Burn of a Poblano Pepper

Peeps, I have a somewhat funny story that I have to share with you. For those that don't know, I'm recently unemployed (my husband was relocated for a new job) and embracing being a job searching house wife for a while... So here's the deal - I unpack/organize/care for the house and take care of preparing meals while my husband works and "brings home the bacon". I have to admit, I like unpacking. I love organizing and putting everything in it's place but the sea of boxes has been somewhat overwhelming!

Yesterday, I finally felt like I made a breakthrough since the kitchen was almost entirely unpacked and put together, so I decided to cook my first meal in our new house. I had been dying to try the Three Bean Chili Con Turkey recipe from the Clean Eating Magazine email newsletter I got last month. So I'm making the chili - chopping, dicing, measuring like the engineer that I am - and I think it's a little odd that the recipe calls for 1 cup each of dried black, pinto, and kidney beans but does not require them to be cooked. I even mentioned this to John the day before (once I set out the dried beans to soak overnight) and said I thought it was going to take a lot longer than 45 minutes to cook the beans. Well, I get to the point where I think I'm done and decide to check the recipe again because I didn't think there was enough liquid to cook the beans, when I see this at the top of the email I kept for the recipe:

We apologize for any inconvenience but we have an update to yesterday’s Three-Bean Chili Con Turkey recipe. We assumed that readers would know to soak their dried beans overnight, but it should be clarified. If you have the time, soak your dried beans in water overnight, or for at least one hour. Boil the beans, according to package directions, then add them to the saucepan. In a real hurry? No problem. Although we encourage readers to choose dried beans over canned whenever possible, canned are fine in a pinch – just rinse them well before using.

AUGHHH!!!!! Are you kidding me?! I just thought the text at the top was newsletter chatter and just scrolled down the page to the recipe. Really, I should have known better. I do know better, but I am such a recipe follower... not trusting of my own cooking skills. So what to do what to do... everything was mixed together. The garlic, onions, celery, poblano pepper, spices, turkey, and dried beans... Well. I cried a little. Then I sucked it up and started picking out the beans a spoonful at a time. 20 minutes later I took my pots (the chili pot and pot for beans), sat at the kitchen table so I could sit and watch/listen to TV, and continued to separate the beans from the chili... for 2 hours.

Yes. I. DID.

Then I cooked the beans and added them back into the chili and cooked it according to the recipe. Which ended up drying out. So I had to add more broth, then once John was home and started helping we added more broth, water, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. By this time I was swearing and just sick of looking at this chili. I didn't even taste it. By this time it was ~8:30 PM (I started at 3:30 PM) and I realize that my middle, ring, and pinky fingers of my right hand were really burning, along with my right thumb under the finger nail. I couldn't remember burning myself and it started out as a mild discomfort and got worse and worse. I put my thumb in my mouth for something and when my mouth started burning I figured out that I had gotten pepper stuff under my nail. I washed my hands really well with soap and put some aloe on my fingers. It did not help, in fact it got worse. What the heck, it was just a Poblano Pepper! They're supposed to be fairly mild, it didn't even occur to me to wear gloves though I was careful with how much I touched it and had washed my hands right after handling the pepper. Desperate I googled hot pepper burns and found this treatment on ehow.

How to Treat a Hot Pepper Burn
Instructions:

1. Wear rubber gloves the oil can seep through latex gloves.

2. Wash your hands thoroughly with dish soap to get all the oil off your hands. Use a fingernail brush to scrub nails with dish soap.
   
   
3. Take an over the counter pain killer as directed
   
   
4. Soak fingers/hands in a bowl of cold milk. The fat in the milk helps soothe hands better than ice water.
   
   
5. Apply an ointment to treat and soothe burns such as aloe vera or hydro cortisone cream.

6. Repeat the milk soak as needed. It will not harm your hands, so do not hesitate to soak as often as necessary

7. Put on gloves to clean the area where you cut the peppers. Use a cleanser with bleach to rid your counter tops, cutting boards and knives of any residual oil.

The only milk in the house we have is skim and 1% so I did the soak in the 1% which felt good while my hand was in it, but as soon as it was out it was burning again. Then I tried lowfat yogurt with the same result. Now it's after 10PM and I'm cursing the chili again and debating running to the store to get either full fat milk or burn cream or both. Finally it dawned on me to try butter... 30 minutes later the burning completely stopped. Butter - thank you thank you, I love you, and will never talk badly about you again!

I had a bowl of the chili for lunch. To my surprise it turned out great! Which makes me feel a teeny bit better about yesterday's ordeal. I topped it with colby jack cheese and had yellow corn chips for dipping. Yum-O!

The recipe instructions and ingredient amounts were way off... but I was able to pull it off. I used 2 1/2 cups of tomato sauce, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 2 1/2 cups of chicken broth, and probably a cup of water or more. Hopefully if you try this recipe (which I do recommend) you will have a better experience than mine!

Zucchini & Banana Bundt Cake

I recently have become a huge fan of the Pioneer Woman, thanks to my friends who introduced me in their own blogs. Well, PW just launched a new site called Tasty Kitchen, a community website where users can search/browse all kinds of recipes, upload their favorite recipes to share, and rate ones they try out themselves. I love it! Last night I spent 30+ minutes browsing - drooling over recipes - and adding ones I wanted to give a try to my "recipe box". Since today I have the day off, I decided to jump right in this morning and put to use the beautiful zucchini sitting on my counter. I tried out this Zucchini & Banana Bundt Cake, with a few modifications to make it healthier. Usually when first trying out a recipe I follow the instructions to the T... but I was feeling it this morning and went for it. It came out really well, very moist and tasty - husband approved! The original recipe is by bakeaholic and can be found here.

Here are some pictures I took of mine... I had some trouble getting it out of the well greased and floured, non-stick bundt pan *rolling eyes*, so I'm grateful that it looks as good as it does! My modifications are listed at the bottom of the post.

So yummy!

Here's a list of the substitutions/modifications I made to make the recipe mostly "clean":

• 1 cup vegetable oil = 3/4 cup apple sauce, 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups sugar = 1 cup organic sucanat, 1/2 cup organic sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour = 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• I added 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  

Curry, my new found love...

A few months ago, I was re-introduced to curry... I first tried it a couple of years ago, and I have to say I wasn't too impressed. It wasn't bad, just OK... I didn't understand my friends who raved about it, so I stuck with my favorite Thai dish - Pad Thai. Turns out, I wasn't trying good curry. Now I LOVE it! My husband and I got on a kick this past spring and just couldn't get enough. I think in one week we had it 3 days in a row. So now I will try any dish that has the word curry in the name!

Last week, my friend N mentioned a Curried Spinach-Potato Soup she made, and I begged for the recipe. She thankfully shared the recipe, and now I have a double batch in my fridge! Some people may scoff at the idea of eating hot soup in the summer, and I might agree... if I wasn't working the night shift in a room that might as well be a meat freezer this week! It really has been the perfect meal to take to work, and I have enough to last several days (I'm going on day 3 and I haven't gotten sick of it yet). I wish the soup had a slightly thicker consistency (I'll hold back on the broth next time), but other than that I really am enjoying every cup. The recipe was easy and consists of leeks, potatoes, spinach, veggie broth, milk, and curry (of course) - very simple ingredients, healthy (clean), and tasty! I'm not sure where the recipe is from, so I'm hesitant to post it here... but if you're interested, email me and I will send it to you.

If you haven't tried curry, give it a try... or a second try! It might surprise you.

Granny's recipe for Sore Throat

I've been sick with a cold the past few days... it started with a sore throat that kept getting worse. No one likes being sick, but I dread having a cold or sinus infection because I can not take anything that contains Pseudoephedrine, and just about every cold/flu medicine has it as an active ingredient (Sudafed, NyQuil, cough syrups, etc.). Pseudoephedrine makes my heart pound/race and keeps me awake. It's what I would guess taking speed would be like... I didn't figure out this sensitivity until a few years ago, and then I had to start looking into other options for finding relief - there aren't many! I always try to head off a cold by taking Zicam at the first signs of getting sick which works most of the time. Not this time...

Surprisingly what works best for me, to heal a sore throat is a gargle recipe that my Granny used to make for me. It really does do wonders, though it took a couple of decades for me to catch on that it really does work. Here's the recipe, though I never measure it out so these amounts are guesstimates.

Salt Gargle
1/4 cup warm-hot water (microwave 35 seconds)
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp honey

The salt helps reduce inflammation, and the honey soothes. I make roughly this amount and gargle it (don't swallow) until it's gone. I do this a few times a day - usually in the morning, right before bed, and in the middle of the night if needed.

Mmm... COOKIES!

I have been wanting to experiment with making a healthier version of chocolate chip cookies for a while now. Today I finally searched for some recipes and pieced my own together that is fairly "clean" (relatively speaking). I'm so impressed with the results, and so is my husband! Here are some pictures of my Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies...

Here's the recipe I pieced together:

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup brown sugar (next time I will try half honey, half brown sugar)
1/2 cup butter (I used Smart Balance)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 generous cup old fashioned rolled oats (I read somewhere that regular rolled oats are best for chewy cookies, and quick cooking oats give you wimpy cookies)
1 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli 60% cocoa)

Cream the butter and brown sugar (and/or honey) together. Add the egg, vanilla, and milk and stir until it's all combined and creamy. In a small bowl, stir all the dry ingredients together and then slowly add them to the wet batter. Mix, then add chocolate chips, and mix again. Spoon cookie batter out on parchment paper lined cookie sheet (cheating I know, but so much easier). I used a generous tablespoon per cookie. Bake at 350 degrees about 12 minutes, until the cookies are nicely browned.

Mmmm... so so good, and I don't feel guilty for eating them!

Bullet Breakfast

I think I've figured out my perfect work day breakfast, and thought I would share... I can't take full credit because I evolved it from a recipe by Tosca Reno in her Eat Clean Cookbook. I call it the Bullet Breakfast because I make it in the Magic Bullet (a mini blender). It's so quick and easy to make - especially if you use a food scale - with minimal clean up! Here you go:

Bullet Breakfast
1 banana
1/2 cup FF/skim milk
1/3 cup rolled oats (old fashioned oatmeal or 1 minute)
1 Tbsp natural peanut butter
1 Tbsp ground flaxseed
1 scoop protein powder - vanilla or chocolate (I use Designer Whey)
1 shot of espresso (optional)
1 tsp honey

This is tasty with or without the espresso (or coffee). I think it's yummier (is that a word?) made with vanilla protein powder if you don't add the espresso.... but better with chocolate if you do (think mocha java!). This is a perfect clean eating breakfast... It's got the complex carbs for fiber, and protein to keep your sugar levels steady and keep you full. Plus, a dose of healthy fats and the kick of the espresso/coffee! If you try it, let me know what you think!

"How To" Produce Wash

It's no secret that the produce brought home from grocery stores are loaded with pesticides. Even organic produce have some pesticides. Veggies and fruit should be washed before eating, and sadly scrubbing them with water doesn't cut it. Here's a list of the most and least contaminated produce,
You can buy produce washes at grocery stores, but a much cheaper and likely safer option is to make your own. Plus, you can reuse the same plastic spray bottle for your homemade produce wash rather than buying a new one each time. Below is a recipe (also see video) from Sophie Uliano, the author of Gorgeously Green.

Produce Wash:

• 2 cups water
• 1 Tbsp baking soda
• 3-4 drops of grapefruit seed extract