What’s your weather like? We have had a rather gloomy day today here in Florida – quite a difference from our normal sunshine. I miss the sun, but I can handle a day of gloom and rain. It does always make me feel a little slower to get moving though. I worked on many cards today and a lot of relaxing.
I want to do a weekly round up of our meals — so not just Sunday Supper, but the whole week. I promise I have meal planning tips and tricks coming this week as well! What are you cooking? What are you craving? I’m always excited for new recipes and ideas!
I have a lot of yummy food to share with you! We started the week with a sesame crusted salmon served on salad. The dressing on this was absolutely delicious. This is from the Half Baked Harvest Super Simple cookbook. It really is a super simple recipe! And we had all the ingredients on hand. I love a simple protein on a salad.
Next up was Shepard’s Pie. I’m not sure why I was craving this classic comfort food, but I was! This photo does not do it justice – it was sooooo yummy! I used stew beef for the meat. I normally would add peas, carrots, and corn, but it was lima beans, carrots, and corn this time. You really can add any veggie you’d like, but these seem to be the typical ones — or you can add no veggies at all! For the mashed potatoes, I like to add some sweet potato to mine. It adds a delicious flavor and I find that I can cut back some on the butter and milk, thus they are healthy mashed potatoes 🙂
Next was a meal that feels like a kid planned it. And I am A-okay with that! We had our delicious pigs in a blanket (made with sourdough discard biscuit dough, see details here) and air fryer fries (yes, both white and sweet). We also had (not pictured) 5 dipping sauces because I am all about the condiments… BBQ sauce, garlic aioli mustard, chipotle mayo, ketchup, and honey mustard. Low on the nutrition scale, but super high on the delicious scale!
Next up is an intruder! Mama sent me a few of her meals this week and I just had to share. This is black bean tacos they made! This recipe is from the New York times, but you can find similar ones many places (i’ve made it with black beans and butternut squash also). The tacos are topped with pickled onions. Pickled onions are a great way to spruce up a meal — you just put thinly sliced red onions in a glass jar with some white vinegar and a tad bit of sugar. Let them sit… overnight or longer… and they can be added to tacos, salads, sandwiches, tuna, eggs… you name it and they enhance it (okay, probably not cookies…) Thanks Mama for sharing!
We made pizza! I used some of the sourdough discard to make this yummy pizza! We had his and hers pizzas because when given the choice, we tend to prefer very different toppings. His was pepperoni, sausage, and green pepper. Mine was sautéed mushrooms (I had a lot of mushrooms on hand – plus I really love mushrooms). I sautéed them with some butter and garlic powder… that’s it. We used Rao’s marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and asiago cheese. They came out really well – this is definitely going on rotation! It’s a great way to have the same meal, but have lots of customizable toppings for each person or what you have on hand! What’s your favorite pizza combination?
Another Mama meal — she made Rigatoni and cauliflower al forno! This is a recipe from the New York Times. You could very easily mix up any pasta bake dish — add your favorite veggies, favorite type of pasta — some olive oil, salt, pepper, and cheese and bake. Maybe a sprinkle of bread crumbs on top. You could add meat (italian sausage, ground beef, meatballs) or marinara instead. Pasta bakes are a good make ahead meal as they can require no last minute preparation.
I try to do protein + salad twice a week or so. They tend to be easier to prepare and balance some of the heavier meals. I also serve salad with almost every meal. This is a yummy grilled BBQ chicken (tenders) served over salad. I drizzled a bit of the BBQ sauce and some ranch on top. This was soooo good. Seriously… didn’t use the oven/stove so no added heat or mess in the house. Gives Chris a defined way to help with preparing dinner. Easy to customize with what you add to your salad: veggies, cheese, croutons, dressing… And is ready in less than 30 minutes, most of which isn’t active time.
Tacos and fajitas are a favorite around here! We had some beef fajita meat in the freezer, so this was an obvious choice. Let me explain the rest… We had multicolored bell peppers and red onions with the meat. All sautéed with some taco seasoning (I often make my own, but this time we had some store bought..) I also did zucchini and mushrooms the same way (with some added spice because I love the spicy veggies!) For toppings we had avocado, cojita cheese (the secret to elevating your Mexican food game!), salsa (hatch green chili and red), sour cream, and cheddar cheese (because choices are important…). I use corn tortillas, Chris uses flour… and I just found a recipe for sourdough ones that will most definitely be on the menu for this week! See the cute round pepper thing in the first photo? Yes, that is a tortilla warmer my mom made us! It works PERFECTLY – no soggy, too hot, crispy, breaking tortillas and they stay warm for the whole dinner! I highly recommend — All I know is that she sewed it and it’s 100% cotton, so you can microwave it without worry of it melting! We also made some margaritas — which were quite delicious and pretty healthy. Just lime juice, a hint of simple syrup, and tequila! Almost as good as being on a beach in Mexico 🙂
And the final recipe for the week is another from Mama.. One pot chicken thighs with black beans and rice. This is a great recipe that is mostly pantry items, plus who doesn’t love a great one-pot meal??? From the New York Times (are you seeing a pattern here?)
Well, it was a busy week of cooking as you can see. Lots of delicious food! What have you been cooking? What ingredients are you missing right now? Let me know so we can chat and troubleshoot together! Happy cooking!!
xoxo, Gretchen