Menu Monday

• Monday: We have our parenting class tonight so I won't be making dinner. I am bringing salad to our get-together. 
• Tuesday: French toast with bacon. I've really been in the mood to have breakfast for dinner lately. Especially since I don't generally have the appetite in the morning for a giant breakfast. I really like breakfast foods, but I'd rather just have yogurt and a cup of coffee in the morning. So breakfast for dinner is my solution. This is my absolute favorite recipe for French toast and if you ever try it, you will quickly see taste why. I think it has something to do with using half-in-half instead of milk and also the use of lemon zest. It just gives it that little something more. I am not sure if I will be making the berry butter or not. I will have to see what fruit prices are like at the grocery store.

• Wednesday: Chicken spaghetti casserole. This Pioneer Woman recipe is one of the freezer meals I made when we were expecting Owen. I make some alterations to the recipe, but I'm sure the original is just as good as mine. I leave out the green pepper and pimentos and substitute in a can of green chiles for some heat. I also leave out the cheddar cheese from in the casserole and just sprinkle some on top of Tim's portion since I am not a fan and it saves on some calories. I made this recipe about a month ago for our parenting class on casserole night, but it was such a hit with everyone that we didn't have any leftovers and I didn't get to have any. I've been craving it ever since. 

• Thursday: Taco salads. No specific recipe here. I am just going to brown some ground beef with taco seasonings, onions, and black beans and then throw it in a homemade taco shell with lettuce, salsa, guacamole and any other fixings that I want. This will be a delicious mid-week dinner that doesn't create much of a mess or take too long to make.
• Friday: Turkey meatloaf.  This is a quick and simple recipe for meatloaf from Skinny Taste. I normally make her bacon wrapped barbecue turkey meatloaf, but I didn't want to go through all the hassle of that recipe and decided to try her regular meatloaf recipe. We will probably have it with mashed potatoes and some type of vegetable. 

• Saturday: Easy Mulligatawny. Tim has requested this recipe that I made last week again for this week. And because our whole family, including Owen, ate it right up last week, I have no problem making it again. It's super easy to make and really different and tasty. 

• Sunday: I am leaving Sunday unplanned in case I decide there is something else I'd like to make this week or if we decide to eat out. I like having a free day so that if something comes up or we need to have the freedom to do something else, we have it. 

So that's it for our meals. What are you eating this week?

Menu Monday

      I have a couple new recipes that I am excited to try this week and some old favorite comfort foods to round out the week. Tim and I are trying to cut down our grocery budget so I only have a certain amount of cash I can spend per week at the grocery store. Last week, I came in under budget and I'm hoping I can do the same this week, though I am a little nervous due to the amount of meat and dairy products I need to buy today. Eep! Wish me luck!
     Anyway, here is our menu for the week. As you can see, we are leaning heavily on some Pioneer Woman recipes this week because I just love all her soup recipes and I love having soup when it's cold and rainy outside. Also, while I love Skinny Taste, she hasn't be posting many dinner recipes lately so I'm hoping she'll have some new main course meals coming soon. To link to the recipes, click on the name of the recipe. What are you eating this week?

• Monday: Perfect potato soup. I have never been a big potato soup fan because most recipes call for cheese and if you didn't know, I don't do cheese other than on pizza. But after having potato soup at my mother-in-law's house during Christmas, I have been craving it ever since. And when I noticed this new recipe on Pioneer Woman's blog this week, I knew I had to try it out. The recipe uses bacon and cajun spice, two ingredients that I'm curious to see their affect on potato soup. Yum! 

• Tuesday: Stuffed buffalo chicken breasts with a side salad. This is a newer Skinny Taste recipe that is similar to her other recipes using rolled up chicken cutlets and a filling of various cheeses and vegetables. We love her zucchini roll-ups and because I have leftover celery from last week, I thought these would be yummy and help use up the rest of my celery. 

• Wednesday: Easy mulligatawny. This is an old favorite and Tim's request for the week. This Pioneer Woman soup recipe is super easy to make and surprisingly good despite it's strange assortment of ingredients. Green apple is soup? What?! This soup is especially good when you dip crusty French bread in it to sop up all the yummy broth. 

• Thursday: Leftover Dr. Pepper shredded pork sandwiches with coleslaw and sweet potato fries. I have had leftovers of this pork in my freezer for several months now and we need to use it up before it gets all frosty and gross. It will also help us stay in budget this week for our grocery bill. I am curious to see if the meat will be spicier since it's had longer to mingle. I don't exactly know if flavors can mingle when they're frozen, but I feel like spaghetti sauce flavors always seem to get better after they've been frozen. Maybe that's just me. 

• Friday: Chicken pot pie with cheddar crust. This is our favorite chicken pot pie recipe and one I found in Food Network magazine last winter. I haven't made it since we lived in Washington and it's about time. The recipe is very time-consuming, but it tastes so good and we will for sure have plenty of leftovers to eat the next day. I am positive that Owen will love it too. (He was still eating purees that last time I made this). P.S. I leave out the mushrooms because I don't trust fungi in my food. 

• Saturday: Leftovers. 

• Sunday: Corn chowder with chiles. This is my favorite recipe for corn chowder. But beware, it is spicy! The heat comes from both green chiles and chipolte chiles in adobo sauce. I also love the addition of corn meal to thicken it and add a nice corn flavor. If you've never made corn chowder, please give this a try. You won't regret it. Also, I recommend cooking the bacon, but instead of leaving it in the soup to get soggy, I would crumble it on top after the soup is done cooking. 

Menu Monday

       This week's menu includes some new recipes and some old favorites. I am still enjoying trying out recipes from my new Pioneer Woman cookbook and of course, Skinny Taste has tons of great healthy recipes for fall. I can't wait to try her most recent recipe which is a turkey potpie with a sweet potato crust. It sounds really yummy. My in-laws are coming to visit this weekend for a pre-Thanksgiving get-together so we'll be having a "Thanksgiving" type meal, though not a traditional one since we'll both be having turkey later in the week. 

• Monday: Chicken spaghetti casserole. This is an older recipe from Pioneer Woman's blog that I haven't made since we lived in Washington. It was one of the recipes that I made when we were expecting Owen and froze a bunch of it for after he was born. It is really tasty. Or at least my version of it is. I leave out the green peppers and pimentos in exchange for chopped green chiles to give it a more mexican-type flavor and some heat. It is really warm and comforting and will be great for our parenting class's casserole night where each couple brings a different type of casserole to share. 

• Tuesday: Italian meatball soup. This is a recipe included in Pioneer Woman's new cookbook. It looks really delicious and is packed with vegetables. This will be the fourth of the seven soup recipes in the cookbook that I will try. We are soup fanatics at this house and could eat soup pretty much every day of the week once it gets cold. Even Owen loves eating soup, though we mainly have to feed it to him because he still doesn't understand why gravity doesn't hold the food to his spoon even when he holds it vertically. I also love making soups on Tuesdays because Tim always has to work late and I never know when he'll come home so I can have the soup made if I have to feed Owen early, yet the soup will still be warm and ready for whenever Tim comes home. 

• Wednesday: Leftover soup.
• Thursday: Skinny chicken enchiladas. Enchilada perfection. I have never made this for someone and had them not say that they were the best enchiladas they had ever eaten. And they are relatively healthy! This is one of my favorite Skinny Taste recipes and one that I will continue to make forever and ever. Amen.

• Friday: Chicken pot pie soup with easy garlic cheddar biscuits. This is a really easy and tasty soup from Skinny Taste and a way to have the chicken pot pie flavor without as many calories. Also, the biscuits are a copy of the Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuits which are delicious too. I am curious to see if Owen will like this soup and if it will allow us to sneak some more vegetables into his diet. He's been pretty vegetable skittish lately, though he did eat brussels sprouts twice last week. Weird, huh?

• Saturday: Tangy tomato brisket with mashed potatoes and roasted garlic brussels sprouts. This will be our Thanksgiving-ish meal with Tim's parents. It is a Pioneer Woman recipe and one that looks super easy and super delicious. Only three ingredients for the brisket and then you just let is roast away in the oven for seven hours. Since there will only be the three adults and one toddler, I didn't plan to make a ton of side dishes or anything. We will most likely have my apple pie for dessert because Tim requested it. I am a little nervous about the brisket because I know that the ideal brisket is smoked and I've never made this before. But I have never been severely disappointed by a Pioneer Woman recipe and hopefully the first time won't be while my in-laws are visiting. 

• Sunday: Homemade pizza night with side salads. For an easy dinner the night before my in-laws head back home, we will have a homemade pizza night. I can make a few pizza dough balls early and then we can top them however we like and clean-up should be pretty easy too. I am thinking that we will make a plain pepperoni pizza, Pioneer Woman's steakhouse pizza, and a third that will feature whatever toppings my in-laws enjoy best. The last time we made pizza at home, Owen had a great time helping put cheese and toppings on. Though for some reason, he wasn't able to put pepperoni anywhere but in his mouth! 

Menu Monday

• Monday: Italian pie. Again, we have our parenting class tonight so we will be going over to the home of the couple that leads it to eat dinner. The entire group contributes to dinner to feed the 10-12 adults and millions of children. This week we were asked to bring casseroles, sides, and desserts for the meal. Tim and I will be bringing Publix's Italian Pie, which is a recipe from their Apron's collection. It is super easy to make and tastes delicious and I figured it would be different from everything else that people would bring. There aren't a lot of Italian casseroles in my experience, but plenty of chicken ones or taco ones. Also, I know that Owen likes this and will eat it happily. Though the meals are generally child-friendly so we haven't had a problem with him eating there so far.

• Tuesday: Autumn penne pasta with sauteed brussels sprouts in a light ragu. This is such a delicious fall recipe from Skinny Taste. Here's a description of the recipe: "Pasta is tossed with sauteed brussels sprouts and a quick meat ragu made light by using lean ground turkey and just enough hot Italian pork sausage to enhance the flavor of the sauce."  Before making this recipe, I had never really eaten brussels sprouts. Now I'm a big fan. They are really not as bad as you'd imagine from all the horror stories you hear as a child. And the Italian sausage gives it a nice spicy kick. 

• Wednesday: Chicken tortilla soup. This is a recipe from my new Pioneer Woman cookbook, but you can find it on her blog as well. I just love soup and I think this recipe might be really good. It seems easy enough and I'm actually going to try to make it in my slow cooker so that I don't have to make dinner in the evening. I will be topping it with one of my absolute favorite foods: acovado! 

• Thursday: Leftovers.
• Friday: Italian drip beef sandwiches with sweet potato fries. This is another Pioneer Woman recipe from the new cookbook that can also be found on the website. The link is to two different recipes for drip beef sandwiches and I will be making the Italian one. Here's a description: "The Italian recipe is fabulous, and the peppers add a wonderful edge." The reason I chose this one is because it includes my second favorite food: peppers! (Particularly banana peppers) And Tim really digs this recipe.

• Saturday: We will be going to Lexington to watch the University of Georgia Bulldogs play Kentucky. One of the perks of living back in the SEC. The game is at night so we will probably eat on the road, but we should have leftovers of dinner from Friday night to feed the super awesome couple that is babysitting Owen for us so that we can go.

Menu Monday

     Our anniversary is this week so we plan on having a nice dinner this Wednesday night, but otherwise we don't have many other plans. I am taking advantage of the last few weeks of summer to make some summery recipes and grill out a lot. We will also be making an easy crockpot recipe to eat Saturday when college football season begins 
(technically it begins Thursday night, but all the fun games are on Saturday). Here's what we'll be eating. What are you going to cook this week?

• Monday: Spicy black bean burgers with chipotle mayonnaise. We will be eating the remainder of these burgers that have been in our freezer from the time I made them in bulk. They are one of mine and Tim's favorite recipes currently and we could eat them on a weekly basis. I can't even begin to tell you how flavorful and wonderful they are topped with the creamy, spicy chipotle mayonnaise and avocado. I love them with sweet potato fries on the side. (If you mix some leftover chopped chipotle peppers with some ketchup and dip them in that, they are divine!) Gina from Skinny Taste says, "One bite of this spicy black bean burger with spicy chipotle mayo and creamy avocado and you won't miss the meat! Yes, these were good enough to please even the adult carnivores in my home."

• Tuesday: Cuban pork chops. This is another recipe from the Bush's Grilling Beans competition on Pioneer Woman's cooking blog. FYI, the recipe I tried last week of grilled chicken with chipotle cream sauce was really good. This recipe looks really tasty because the pork is marinated in orange and lime juices with cumin and cayenne pepper. Then you top it with a chimichurri sauce. Pioneer Woman says, "Spicy, slightly sweet, and huge on flavor, these pork chops are out of this world."

• Wednesday: Tilapia with lemon butter sauce and angel hair fresca. This is a recipe that I've made for years now. It is a Publix Apron's recipe that I first made I think for Valentine's Day or one of our anniversaries, I'm not sure which. But it is a really delicious semi-fancy meal that we both really love. I think it will be a perfect anniversary meal. I also plan on making some type of dessert for our anniversary, but I haven't decided what yet. 

• Thursday: Steakhouse pizza.  I have been wanting to make my own pizza dough again for a while now and when I ran across this recipe while looking for recipes on Pioneer Woman's cooking blog, I knew this would be a perfect recipe to try out. Here is Pioneer Woman's description, "I love this pizza. I cooked up some balsamic red onions and added a little more balsamic to the pizza sauce for a little more depth of flavor. Then I topped the pizza with thin slices of medium rare steak after I pulled the baked pizza out of the oven. The hot pizza warmed the steak without ruining the beautiful medium-rare redness, and angels sang in the heavens. At the end, I drizzled the whole thing with some good steak sauce…and, well, it was too good for words."

• Friday: Shrimp tacos. I knew I wanted tacos this week (like every week), but I wanted to try a new recipe or a different type of meat than I normally use. When I ran across this recipe for shrimp tacos on Pioneer Woman's blog and saw that she topped it with cilantro-jalapeno slaw, I knew I had to try it. Add some avocado and a squeeze of lime and I think it's going to be heaven in a tortilla. 

• Saturday and Sunday: Dr. Pepper pork sandwiches with cilantro-jalapeno slaw. This is one of the best recipes on Pioneer Woman's blog and a great meal for watching the big game on Saturday night. Go Dawgs! (P.S. Owen has learned to "Call the Dawgs" and it is so awesome!) It's super easy to make this recipe because all you do is brown the pork shoulder and then throw it in the crock pot with a chopped onion, a can of Dr. Pepper, and part of a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. (You can use the whole can like Pioneer Woman does, but then you would die.) I will also be able to use more of the cilantro-jalapeno slaw from the night before since I'm the only one who eats it in our household. And this recipe will make plenty so that we can eat leftovers the next night as sandwiches or shredded pork tacos. 

     It's going to be a delicious week!

Menu Monday: Freezer Meals for a Toddler

      Everyone knows that I love to cook and I particularly love trying new recipes, but sometimes those recipes aren't exactly appropriate dinners for Owen and I am left scrambling to find something for him to eat. And lunchtime is a hassle as well because Owen flat refuses to eat leftovers most days and I am afraid he is about to turn into a peanut butter sandwich if he eats one more. And while sometimes I can get Owen to eat whatever meat we're eating for dinner and sometimes a starchy side, he's not interested in eating most vegetables. So after searching Pinterest for some ideas and inspiration, I decided to make some freezer friendly recipes that I can feed Owen on nights when he refuses what we're eating or to switch up our normal morning breakfast routine of either oatmeal or scrambled eggs with sausage. Surprisingly, I had trouble finding meals that I thought were healthy or included vegetables (the more hidden, the better). This pin below had the best ideas for types of things to freeze, but most of the recipes just seemed so unhealthy, featuring mainly meat and carbs. So I decided to search my favorite cooking blog, Skinny Taste, and find some things that I could make and freeze for the kiddo. And since I'm only cooking two nights this week before going to Georgia for a friend's wedding, I decided that Tim and I will be grilling and eating a bunch of vegetables so that I can focus on making and storing these meals for Owen. 

     I found a lot of my recipes on Skinny Taste, but I have decided to adapt a few of them to make them more suitable for Owen and to add some extra vegetables. I am making breakfast meals and lunch/dinner meals. 

Breakfast:

Chocolate chip banana bread muffins.
This recipe looks really yummy and I'm hoping that by introducing Owen to banana flavor in foods, that one day he'll be able to eat a banana. It's not the healthiest recipe I've included, but breads typically freeze well and I know I won't have to fight Owen to eat this meal. Add some fresh fruit and he's got a great breakfast. 

Broccoli and cheese mini omelets.

I make scrambled eggs for Owen pretty often, but it gets tiring dirtying up a pan every morning with eggs and it would be great to just pull something out of the fridge and heat it up. Owen had eaten quiche before (Sausage and Kale quiche) and liked it, so I have high hopes for these mini quiches with broccoli. Broccoli is one of the vegetables that we have been unable to get Owen to eat most of the time. I'm hoping if I add some turkey sausage to these mini quiches, that he won't even notice the broccoli. 

Green monster smoothie. 

Owen loves smoothies. Anytime we buy one while we're out running errands, he winds up drinking most of it himself. This smoothie is pretty tasty and I've made it before. The reason I picked it is because it contains so much spinach and I'm hoping that Owen will think that its tasty too. I may add some more fruits to it (it already has banana) to see if I can't camouflage the spinach even more. And I have some leftover baggies for freezing baby food purees and I think I can use them to freeze portions of this smoothie for Owen to drink. 

Lunches/Dinners:

Baked chicken nuggets.
As a family, we love these chicken nuggets. And Owen loves dipping them in sauces and eating them. They are super easy to make and taste so great. When I serve them to him, I can maybe add some sweet potato fries and maybe a little bit of whatever vegetable we might be eating that night. 

Petite BBQ turkey meatloaves.
This is a fabulous meatloaf recipe. I plan to leave off the bacon, but I think little cupcake sized portions will be great for Owen. He ate this recipe happily the other week when I made it for the first time and the best part is that the recipe contains zucchini, red bell peppers, and onion. I love sneaky vegetables. 

 Zucchini tots.
I have never tried this recipe, but it looks like a great side dish for Owen. It's almost like a little zucchini and cheese quiche, but Gina from Skinny Taste serves them as a side dish.  

Pasta with very veggie sauce.
This recipe packs in tons of vegetables and then purees them so that your baby is none the wiser. I think this will be a fun recipe and I love the tiny star pasta. Owen has been kind-of weird about the texture of pasta, so I'm hoping that the smaller pasta will help with this. This recipe is made on the stove-top so it will help me make this while one of the other recipes is baking in the oven. 

 Taco muffins. 
This is a recipe from Kraft Foods. I will make them as mild as possible for Owen and that way, when we're eating Mexican (which I tend to make pretty spicy the way we like it ) Owen can have these with whatever side dishes we're having with our meal. They don't have tons of vegetables in them, but I thought I could add some black beans to the meat too for some fiber.

Anyway, here is my method for making all these recipes in one day. We'll see how it goes.

Brown ground beef with taco seasoning.

Chop and shred vegetables. 

• zucchini (3 recipes)
• red bell pepper (2 recipes)
• tomatoes
• carrot
• onion (2 recipes)
• broccoli

Prepare banana bread muffins and bake at 325 F.

Set aside to cool and turn oven up to 350 F.

Make mini omelets.

While omelets are baking, make smoothies.

Then mix together meatloaf mixture.

Bake meatloaf and bread chicken nuggets. 

Turn oven up to 425 F.

Make chicken bites.

While those are baking, make pasta on stove.

Set aside chicken bites to cool and turn oven down to 400 F.

Make zucchini tots and taco cupcakes and bake at the same time.

Menu Monday

      We had a nice weekend with my in-laws at their mountain house (stay tuned for pictures sometime this week.) But because we were on semi-vacation, we didn't eat as well as we probably should have so we are both happy to be back home where we can resume our healthy eating. Tim and I have both felt our bodies negatively reacting the past two weekends while we've been on vacation eating fast food and drinking a lot of soft drinks and things like that. I am making our dinners this week almost entirely from recipes I've found on the blog Skinny Taste. I really love this blog (obviously) because the creator's recipes are healthy and diet-friendly, but they also typically have a lot of flavor so they don't seem like "health" food. So if you're looking to clean up your eating habits, but you don't want to sacrifice flavor, check out Skinny Taste. 
      And here's our menu for this week!

• Monday: Cilantro lime tilapia tacos with black beans and corn. Here's the description: "Flaky white fish, tomatoes, jalapeños, cilantro and lime topped with avocado. A fresh and flavorful way to spice up fish, quick enough to make for a busy weeknight!" I made this a few weeks ago and we both loved it so much that we're ready to have it again. Even Owen enjoyed them the first time I made them (sans jalapeño for him). We will have them with black beans and corn. 

• Tuesday: Spicy black bean burgers with chipotle mayonnaise and sweet potato fries. Gina from Skinny Taste says, "one bite of this spicy black bean burger with spicy chipotle mayo and creamy avocado and you won't miss the meat!" And she's right! I made this recipe just last week and they were a huge hit here at the Rumely household. Tim has a deep-seated fear of mayonnaise so he really missed out though. The chipotle mayo and avocado really make this a fantastic burger. The recipe only makes four burgers though, so I'm going to double or triple the recipe so that I can freeze some burgers for us to have another time. We will eat these with sweet potato fries. 

• Wednesday: Coconut chicken salad with warm honey mustard vinaigrette. Gina from Skinny Taste describes this recipe as "warm oven-fried coconut chicken over a bed of baby greens, cucumber, tomato, shredded carrots topped with a hot honey mustard vinaigrette. It's the perfect mix of salty and sweet, warm and cold." We've never had this recipe before, but a nice uncomplicated salad seems like a great recipe for the middle of the week. And I bet Owen will love the coconut chicken. 

• Thursday: Island pork tenderloin with sauteed garlic spinach and sweet potato fries. This is our tried-and-true recipe from the P90X diet. I have talked about it several times before. We will be having it for dinner tonight because we are having company. Tim's college roommate Tom and his girlfriend Julie are visiting from Pennsylvania. We haven't seen them in a couple of years since we visited them during our trip to Philadelphia the summer before Owen was born.This recipe is always a crowd-pleaser. Unless you're feeding a vegetarian. Or a Muslim. Or someone who really loves "Charlotte's Web."
• Friday: Cajun chicken pasta lightened up with steamed broccoli. Here is the description of the recipe: "This colorful Cajun spiced pasta is tossed with chicken strips, bell peppers, red onion, mushrooms and scallions in a creamy light sauce. One of the easiest ways to lighten up a pasta dish is to add tons of protein and vegetables to your dish which keeps the portions large and the carbs low and this dish is a perfect example. Be sure to be generous with your Cajun spices, it should have plenty of kick so don't be shy!" I used to make a Cajun chicken pasta recipe from the blog Pioneer Woman Cooks, but it uses tons of heavy cream and has to be packed with calories, so I'm hoping this version will allow me to feel like I'm splurging when I'm really not. We will be having this recipe with steamed broccoli to add another vegetable to the meal. 

• Saturday: Grilled chicken breast marinated in Stubb's chicken marinade with veggies. This is one of our absolute favorite marinades for chicken. It is so wonderful. We used it a lot when we were first married and living in Georgia, but not so much once we moved to Washington because the price was close to $5 for one bottle. Now that we're back in the south, we've been able to find it again for cheap enough that we feel like it's worth buying again. Try it sometime!

• Sunday: Summer vegetables with sausage and potatoes. This recipe pairs "lean Italian chicken sausage with summer bell peppers and zucchini sauteed with baby red potatoes and fresh herbs for a quick one pot meal." I am all about a one-pot meal so as not to dirty up the kitchen too much and I really love turkey sausage and the mixture of it plus a bunch of vegetables seems really appealing. 

• Extra recipe: Cherry custard. Because we've been trying to eat better, we haven't been eating a lot of treats, so to reward us for eating well, I'm going to try this summery recipe. Gina from Skinny Taste explained why she created this recipe on her blog. "Before the summer comes to an end, I am trying to enjoy all my favorite summer fruits, especially cherries, watermelon and peaches. This cherry custard is a must, I just love the flavor and you'll be surprised how easy it is to make," she said. I love cherries and I'm excited to eat this recipe. I've been craving cherry pie or something similar, so this recipe is a way to indulge without making (and eating!) an entire pie.

      So that's it for us. What are you eating this week?

Menu Monday (Late)

    Sorry for being late with this post this week. I had a little trouble getting my act together yesterday and planning a menu and making it to the grocery store. Thus, we had pizza for dinner last night. 
    This week is a short week again because we will be going to visit my in-laws this weekend.  I am trying all new recipes this week. And as an FYI, all of our recipes that I made last week were really yummy. I highly recommend any of them and even Owen ate some of every recipe I made (and liked it). So they're kid-approved too. 

• Tuesday: Mom's Spanish Chicken and Rice with a side salad. This is a recipe from Skinny Taste that looked particularly yummy and filling. Also, I have a thing for olives right now. Tim and I laugh because you would never be able to tell if I was pregnant or not based on cravings alone because I always crave weird foods. My current cravings are Spanish olives and banana peppers. This recipe is based on the one made by the mother of the creator of Skinny Taste. I just love ethnic foods because the family stories behind them make them seem that much tastier. I am looking forward to tasting it. We have about ten minutes before it's finished. Yum!

• Wednesday: Linguine and Shrimp Fra Diavolo with steamed broccoli and side salad. I have a similar recipe that I've made, but this Skinny Taste version looks really tasty. I love that it uses fresh basil. I will be leaving out the capers though because I don't really like the flavor. We have frozen shrimp in the freezer already so I didn't have to buy very many ingredients to make this dish. Tim and I both love a spicy tomato sauce so we will both most likely give this a thumbs up. 

• Thursday: Spicy Black Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayonnaise. We'll be having these burgers with sweet potato fries. This is my attempt at a "Meatless Monday" of sorts. Though I don't feel the need to be constrained to Mondays, I do think that cooking without meat every once in a while is a good thing health-wise and also saves money at the grocery store. This recipe looks really yummy and the creator of Skinny Taste also includes instructions for how to freeze the burgers to make again another time. I am really hoping that this recipe works out for me. I haven't had much luck in the past when I've made healthy burgers like turkey and mushroom burgers and black bean burgers. I always have trouble getting them to hold together and not fall all to pieces on the grill. These look really tasty and I'm craving the avocado and chipotle mayonnaise. 

   

     So that's it for our weekly menu. What are you eating this week?

Menu Monday

     Hey Folks! It's a short week for Menu Monday because we will be leaving for Pigeon Forge after Tim gets off work on Thursday. I'm super excited about our trip and being able to relax for a couple days. We had a really good week of dinners last week and I highly recommend several of the recipes. 
    Our favorites were: cilantro lime tilapia tacos, grilled flank steak with black beans and corn, and the sweet and fiery pork tenderloin with mango salsa. You can find links to all of these recipes on last week's post. 

This was our flank steak recipe with cucumber onion salad.

This is the sweet and fiery pork tenderloin with mango salsa, coconut brown rice, and sauteed spinach. (I would skip the coconut brown rice)

• Monday: Bacon topped turkey meatloaf with barbecue sauce.  I'm not a huge fan of turkey as a substitute for ground beef in most things, but Skinny Taste does make a good turkey meat loaf. And this version, with barbecue and bacon, can't be any worse! And the interesting thing is that it uses zucchini in the meatloaf mix. I will use Sonny's sweet barbecue sauce because it is Tim's favorite. We'll have it with sauteed green beans and glazed baby carrots. 

• Tuesday: Sausage stuffed zucchini boats.  This is an interesting looking recipe from Skinny Taste. And I happen to have a couple links of spicy turkey sausage in the freezer. Tim and I both really like zucchini so we're happy to eat it in one way or another for two days in a row. Plus, it's a great summer vegetable. We'll have it with a side salad.  

• Wednesday: Chocolate chip banana pancakes. I'm craving a breakfast for dinner kind-of meal and this recipe from Skinny Taste looks pretty yummy. And I have a feeling that Owen might eat his dinner without a fuss if we make this. Maybe. He's still not a big fan of bananas. We will eat them with leftover bacon from Monday night's dinner. 

Menu Monday

     Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all enjoyed your Fourth of July last week and the weekend. I was really spoiled because Tim had five days off from work in a row so we were able to get some projects done around the house and spend a lot of time together. 

    I'm very excited about my meals this week because I am going to be trying all new recipes for each meal. I scoured Skinny Taste's blog to find some recipes that I've never tried and we're definitely getting some variety this week, though a lot of the recipes include some of the same ingredients. And without further ado, here's the menu for this week, complete with pictures and links to the recipes. If you ever try out one of the recipes I've found, let me know how you liked it!

• Monday: Cilantro lime tilapia tacos with corn on the cob and black beans. This is a newer recipe from the blog Skinny Taste. I've only had fish tacos a handful of times, but I generally like them. I'm hoping this recipe is good because I'd like to cook fish a little more often since it's so low in fat and healthy for us. I love the flavors of cilantro and lime together and I also love avocado. 

• Tuesday: Asian peanut noodles with chicken. This is a recipe from Skinny Taste that I've never made because the list of ingredients is pretty big. But since I'm making a couple other Asian-inspired meals this week, I know I will be using several of the ingredients multiple times this week. This reminds me of a dish from Doc Chey's in downtown Athens, a restaurant that Tim and I used to eat at a lot during college. 

•  Wednesday: Grilled flank steak with black beans and corn. With cucumber and onion salad in Italian dressing. I've never grilled flank steak before, but it is supposedly a cheaper cut of meat and always looks really good in recipes. This Tex-Mex style meal is from Skinny Taste and looks really great for summer. Especially since we can cook the meat outside and then pair it with a cold summer salad. 

• Thursday: Dirty brown rice and shrimp. With leftover cucumber and onion salad and maybe a regular side salad. I love Cajun food. I hope someday that I can go to New Orleans and try out the real stuff, but until that time, I'll just have to try making it at home. This recipe looks really easy and has a lot of hidden vegetables in it. (Shh...don't tell Tim) I even have pretty high hopes that Owen might eat some. He ate up some paella made with Spanish rice, shrimp, and chorizo sausage the other night. 

• Friday: Sweet and fiery pork tenderloin with mango salsa. Sides will be brown coconut rice with cilantro and sauteed spinach with garlic. This meal looks super tasty and is another summer-friendly grilling recipe. The meat will use some of our Asian ingredients for the week and seems really tasty. We have a leftover pork tenderloin from grilling this past week in the freezer. The rice is a side dish that the creator of Skinny Taste recommends having with the pork. I'm willing to give it a try to see if we like it. 

• Saturday: Bangin' Grilled Shrimp Skewers. With Asian cabbage mango slaw and sweet potato fries. This recipe is based on the Bang Bang Shrimp from Bonefish Grill. Tim and I lived near a Bonefish Grill when we were in Washington and that was my favorite thing to order there. It is so good. This recipe seems extremely easy and it also has a stamp of approval from one of my best friends. Gina from Skinny Taste recommended this slaw recipe as a side for her shrimp recipe and since it doesn't have vinegar or mayonnaise like most slaw recipes, Tim might actually like it. And sweet potato fries are one of our staple side dishes. Owen loves them and we do too. 

• Sunday: Buffalo chicken bites with celery and carrot sticks. This is another recipe that I discovered while reading my friend's menu blog. And I trust her judgment. Plus, I've been craving hot wings for a while now, but I know they're not very healthy for you. These buffalo chicken bites have just three Weight Watchers points per serving. Which seems pretty impressive. We will have a side dish with them, but other than carrots and celery sticks, I'm not sure what I want to have. This recipe is (surprise!) not from Skinny Taste. Instead, it is from a blog called Laaloosh, which features healthy low-fat Weight Watchers-friendly meals.