Monday Meal Planning 10.17.11

My life has become so out-of-control crazy busy lately, that I have to admit that I am incredibly proud of myself for continuing to cook a dinner for my family nearly every night. Especially since what I really want to do is crawl into bed, throw the covers over my head, and hide, but that's neither here nor there. Onto the meals for this week!

Monday: Wild rice stuffed acorn squash, bread, salad
Tuesday: Grilled chicken breasts, macaroni and cheese, roasted purple cauliflower
Wednesday: Taco Rice
Thursday: Pot Roast, mashed potatoes, salad
Friday: Pizza and salad
Saturday: Butternut Squash Enchiladas, Quick Spicy Rice
Sunday: Chicago dogs, french fries, roasted beets

Monday Meal Planning 9.19.11

Just a quick list this week - September is about to swallow me whole!

Monday: Chicken Fajitas and quick spicy rice
Tuesday: Pepperoncini Beef Sandwiches, fries, watermelon
Wednesday: Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes, Roasted Garlic, and Kale (except with swiss chard this time)
Thursday: Chicken Strips, green beans, watermelon
Friday: Homemade pizza - individual style (i.e. everyone gets to top their own) - I cannot believe that this is the first time I've posted this link here. I love this pizza dough and it makes a pizza that I think is better than any takeout or delivery we can get near our house. So yummy!
Saturday: Dinner w/Aaron's family - I'll probably take a dessert as usual. Peach pie sounds fantastic.
Sunday: ??? I've been leaving Sunday dinner up to Aaron lately, so who knows what we'll end up with this week. I'm fully expecting something grilled; he wants to use up the last of our propane before grilling season is over.

Pasta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Roasted Garlic, and Kale

As usual, I am a horrible food blogger - I get so hungry making dinner that I dive in and am halfway through my meal before I realize I didn't take a picture of the food when it looked the most appealing. Then I figure, oh well, too late now, so I eat the rest. Afterwards, the regret sets in - this meal was so delicious, and now I don't feel like I can share it on my site because I don't have any pictures.

Well, this one was so simple, delicious, and comforting that you'll just have to use your imagination.

So! Imagine this: You look in your refrigerator and you have a large bowl of heirloom cherry tomatoes. Yellow, green, orange, red, purple jewels just begging to be eaten. And you know they taste even better roasted just until their skin starts to crack and their juices leak. You also have a head of monster-sized garlic, a rubber-banded together bunch of dark green kale, and a fresh block of parmesan just begging to be shaved into a pillowy cloud of deliciousness.

You can see why I was inspired, I'm sure. These ingredients, cooked just so, and served over pasta made one heck of a fantastic meal last night. Aaron and I usually exercise some self-control and save portions of dinner for lunch the next day, but last night all self control went out the window and we ate every single last bite. "It will be better freshly cooked," we told ourselves. I'm not sure that's true, but it was a good enough excuse for us.

Pasta with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Roasted Garlic, and Kale

3 cups cherry tomatoes
2 large cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

1 bunch kale (about 12 stalks)
1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. butter
1 c. stock (I used vegetable, but chicken would work well too)
salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, to taste

1/2 lb. rotini, or other short pasta, cooked in salted water per manufacturer's instructions
1/2 c. shredded parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. On a large roasting pan, toss cherry tomatoes and unpeeled garlic cloves with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 15-20 minutes, or just until the skins on the tomatoes start to burst and the juices start to escape. Remove from the oven, and set aside.

Meanwhile, wash your kale well and remove the leaves from the tough stem. Chop the leaves into bite-sized pieces. Add olive oil and butter to a saute pan over medium heat. When butter has completely melted, add kale and saute until the leaves begin to wilt. Add in the stock, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes, and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat, cover partially, and simmer for 10 minutes, or until leaves are soft.

While kale is cooking, remove garlic from its skins and smash with a spoon in a small bowl. Add smashed, roasted garlic to the kale and stir. Add in tomatoes and accumulated juices. Serve kale and tomato mixture over pasta, and top with parmesan to taste.

Monday Meal Planning 7.25.11

We are back! We survived camping and had three fun meals made over the camp fire (and then got rained out and had to leave a night early, but still! Fun!). We didn't get extremely creative this time (hot dogs, s'mores, bacon and eggs, biscuits and grilled cheese in the pie iron), but we will definitely be heading out again sometime soon and I'll try some more adventurous campfire meals next time.

Since we didn't get home until about 9:00 last night, we still have most of our unpacking to do, so the week starts out slow, food-wise. However, my parents shared some of their garden bounty with us, so I can't wait to cook those amazingly fresh vegetables.

Here goes:

Monday: Grilled BBQ chicken, dilly potatoes, and carrots

Usually I peel and slice the potatoes for our foil packet dinners, but since I have a bunch of new red potatoes, I'm just going to wash and quarter them before adding butter, fresh dill, and salt. I'm going to try baby carrots in a foil packet tonight too, topped with butter, honey, and salt. I can't wait to see how these turn out!

Tuesday: Stuffed zucchini and rice pilaf

My parents had some huge zucchinis already, so I took one and we're filling it with all kinds of good stuff (except I'm using turkey sausage instead of regular - shh...don't tell Aaron!)

Wednesday: Spicy Garlic and Lime Black Bean Enchiladas, corn bread

I usually make some sort of rice to go on the side of Mexican dishes, but since there's rice in these enchiladas, I'm going to try corn bread or something similar on the side.

Thursday: Cowboy Quesadillas, chips and guacamole

This will use up any leftover BBQ chicken from Monday, and any leftver black beans from Wednesday. That's what a call a win-win kind of dinner!

Friday: Pizza Rolls, fresh vegetables, fruit salad

I've been making pizza of some sort every Friday that we're home lately, and this week I'm using some dough I have frozen for pizza rolls. I'm filling mine with pepperoni and black olives, Gabbie's will have straight up pepperoni, and I'm guessing Aaron will want his favorite - ham and pineapple. I love that these can make all three of us happy in one baking dish!

Saturday: Out

I have actually been really good with making and sticking to meal plans lately. In fact, we've only been out to eat twice in the past two weeks, which is pretty good for us (this includes lunches!). So, of course, I want to reward myself for being so good by heading out and ruining my streak. I'm totally craving Asian food of some sort, so I'll have to convince the rest of the family that they are craving it too.

Sunday: Dinner with the extended family

Once a month Aaron's family gets together at his grandparents' house for dinner. We've promised to make it to this one (we actually got more than a couple of days notice for this one, so we can plan accordingly), so I don't have to plan dinner for Sunday. However, I do have to make a pie, because that's one of the main reasons his family likes me (besides my winning personality and ability to create adorable babies, of course), and his grandpa gets disappointed if I show up without one of my "famous" pies (famous only to them). This week will probably be cherry crumb, since they're so delicious right now.

Monday Meal Planning (on Tuesday!) 7.18.11

This is a weird week meal planning-wise, because we may be heading up north camping this weekend, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow (depends on the forecast, which currently shows rain for the entire weekend - BOO!), and if we are we have to be ready tomorrow night because we're leaving immediately after work on Thursday. Aaron asked me to meal plan for the trip, and so I've been doing some campfire cooking research and now I'm even more confused than ever. Also, like everywhere else right now, it's incredibly freaking hot, and so the meals this week can all be made without turning on the stove or oven (or even the grill because I would feel bad making Aaron stand outside in front of a hot grill with heat indexes around 102 degrees!). I'm including last night's meal here as well, because it was really good and simple.

Monday: Turkey Sandwiches on Pretzel Rolls, cut up vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, radishes), fruit salad, cheese puffs

We bought some mini pretzel baguettes at Whole Foods this past weekend, and for dinner last night we split them, topped them with sliced turkey, meunster (or monster, if you're Gabbie) cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and Swedish mustard. They were fantastic! We also gave in to Gabbie's request for Cheetos last night, but used them to help her with counting and math (we're doing some homeschool-style preschool in the evenings this summer). I asked her how many cheese puffs she wanted, and then we counted them out, and handed them to her one-by-one asking how many she had on her plate and then how many she had left, using some good-old finger math. Then she ate them all and was a very happy girl!

Tuesday: Italian Vegetable Hoagies, chips, fruit salad

Another no-cook meal, and this one is vegetarian to boot. I've been feeling like I've been eating too much meat lately, so I'm trying for at least 3 meat-free dishes a week if I can get away with it. Of course, you wouldn't be able to tell that by the meal that I have planned for...

Wednesday: BBQ pulled pork, cole slaw

We're having a "southern food" lunch potluck for book club tomorrow, so I'm making crockpot pulled pork. Left-overs will become dinner, and I don't even mind that I'll be eating the same thing all day, because it's easy and I have little to no motivation to do anything extra when it's this hot out.

Thursday: Dinner at my parents' house

No idea what we'll have, but I'm guessing it will come straight out of their garden, and I can't wait!

Friday through Sunday: Campfire food!

Here's where the research I've been doing comes in. My favorite thing growing up and going camping was grilled cheese made in a pie iron, and this post has some great ideas for using the pie iron to make slightly fancier meals. About.com has some great camping recipes too, and I've been having fun perusing these. I'm not sure what all we'll be eating, except we will be using the pie iron for at least one meal, we'll be having hot dogs over the fire at least once, and I cannot wait to make s'mores using a peanut butter cup in place of the normal chocolate bar. YUM!

Several Things to Make with Strawberries

Here in Michigan it is currently the height of strawberry season, and we are doing our darndest to eat our fair share of these gorgeous, delicious berries. The girls and I went strawberry picking this past Saturday and came home with over 8 pounds of berries to enjoy. We also got a bunch of strawberries from our CSA this past week, so I think it's safe to say we're nearly swimming in berries. In addition to simply sitting down with a bowl of berries, here are several recipes we've made (and then a couple more I want to make):

So far we've made:
Strawberry Lemonade Icebox Pie (I omitted the meringue and topped with whipped cream instead)
Strawberry Jam (placed in sterilized jars and processed for 15 minutes)
Strawberry Shortcake (my grandma's recipe and my favorite strawberry dessert - best when eaten immediately)

I still want to make:

Strawberry Basil Lemonade (we had some fresh lemonade with sage this weekend and it was amazing, so I'll be all about infusing lemonades with herbs for a while)
More strawberry jam, this time a different variety (maybe with peaches, or infused with something)
Strawberry gelato (unfortunately my ice cream maker bit the big one, so I may be out of luck on this)

Is there anything else I should make with my strawberry bounty?