What’s for dinner vol. 14

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Here are some of the tasties we’ve been enjoying lately.

I’ve already talked about our date night at Crocante, with it’s delicious coffee, spinach pastries, and cheesecake. Can’t wait to go back there again.

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We checked out Costco and came away with a huge bag of chicken, a gigantic chicken pot pie, and a new brand of Taquitos. The Costco chicken pot pie was very elusive in West Palm. We haven’t had one in a couple of years, so we savored every salty delicious bite. The new taquitos were pretty great too, way more filling than our usual brand.

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One of the very best things about this place is our ability to eat outside at a real table like grown ups. And I get to set a pretty table now, which I haven’t done since the early years of our marriage. I was excited to bring out my table linens again. Which sounds lame, but I don’t care.

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We went out to eat last weekend at Chik N Treats, which serves an odd mix of Chinese, Cuban, and froyo. We’ve been there several times while we were looking at apartments down here and it’s been good every time. Jason had the bourbon chicken and I got the fish. And yay plantains! I’ve got to try cooking those again.

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I did batch prepping again last week (and remembered to take a picture this time). In two hours I prepped and cooked enough for several days. I baked chicken breasts and made chicken soup (which we ended up not liking). I made a huge pot of brown rice cooked in chicken broth for flavor. I boiled six eggs and shredded up a head of lettuce for easy salad prep. I cut up squash, asparagus, mushrooms, peppers, and tomatoes. I also divided up snack sized portions of pistachios and our Cheese of the Week, mozzarella from Penn Dutch . A couple of hours of concentrated prep time saved me tons of time this week, and we ate a lot more healthy foods. I can’t even express how much I’m loving this way of cooking.

Here are some of our meals from this week.

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Chicken taco salad with guacamole. (yes, I can eat this every week)

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A random meal where I was too tired to make decisions so I just pulled everything out of the fridge and we picked while watching TV.

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Super tasty ranch burgers made with this homemade Ranch dressing mix. (I left out the powdered buttermilk). Will definitely be using that again!

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Jason was all jelly of my Chik N Treats fish, so I made my own version with beans and rice and squash.

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Another random meal to try and clean out the fridge. Sliced turkey, asparagus, squash, red pepper strips, and baby carrots.

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One side benefit of my prepping was that I was able to start adding veggies to every breakfast. I challenged myself to throw in veggies every morning, even if it was only a handful of baby carrots. Turns out, I really love vegging out my breakfast! Who knew?

We got some delicious chicken sausage at Pann Dutch last week. We leftover sausage for breakfast along with eggs cooked with tomatoes, and tri colored pepper strips. I didn’t think either of us was a huge pepper fan, but we’ve been munching on them all week.

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I sautéed up some tomatoes and spinach to go with my eggs one morning.

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And did the same with spinach and mushrooms. I’m cooking eggs every morning anyway, and it only takes a couple more minutes to add in some veggies.

Looking forward to next week-
We’ll be eating out A LOT, but I don’t want to ruin the progress I’ve been making with healthy eating lately. It’s going to be a challenge, that’s for sure. Wish me luck!

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for Dinner? vol. 13

Here are a few things we’ve been munching on lately.

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Weekend breakfasts on the balcony.

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We found a new favorite grocery store, Pann Dutch. Great prices on produce and fantastic specialty pastas and cheeses. We’re not huge dairy people, but we’re thinking of forming a “fancy cheese of the week” club. Last weekend’s selection was Strawberry Chardonnay (my pick). Jason didn’t love it, he’s not a Chardonnay fan. But I thought it was delicious with grapes. The feta is also fantastic. I’ve been sneaking cubes all week and putting it on everything.

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We also tried some dried gnocchi with pesto. It’s been over a year since we’ve had gnocchi and it was super yummy. I need to learn how to make it homemade.

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We stopped by Doris Italian Market for gelato and latte. We’ve yet to find any Cuban coffee in Coral Springs, so this is the next best thing. My gelato this time was strawberry cheesecake and raspberry white chocolate chip.

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I made tasty tacos with guac, tomatoes, and feta. I could eat that every week!

Not pictured- I’ve been following Lauren @eating_whole on Instagram and she inspired me to do batch prepping this week. I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture! Anyway I made a big vat of sausage lentil soup and some salads in jars. I cooked up a bunch of ground beef, onions, and garlic for spaghetti and tacos. I always cook enough oatmeal for four days, so I prepped that too, plus I boiled some eggs for snacks. I did all this on Wednesday and I’ll have plenty of healthy food to last us through the weekend. Weekends are always bad for us food-wise, so hopefully having this stuff at hand will help us make better choices.

Looking forward to next week-
Do more batch cooking.
Jason’s company picnic
Fish tacos
Check out Costco and see if that’s a viable grocery store option.

We’re still looking around at all the grocery stores in town to see what will be a good fit for us. There’s a Green Market that we’ll be checking out in the next couple of weeks too. We get weirdly excited about trying new grocery stores. 😛

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for dinner? vol. 12

It’s been over a year since I’ve done a What’s for Dinner post and I kind of missed it! It’s fun looking back at what we eat. Well fun for me, at least 😛

Here are some of the things we nommed on this past week-

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Lentil soup with turkey sausage. I usually make soup at least once a week, and this is a favorite. I’ll post the recipe this week.

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Fish with tomatoes and parmesan with zucchini crisps and salad. This is my standard no-brainer fish recipe. Fish + can of tomatoes drained + basil. Cook on 350 for 15 minutes then add parm. I tried out this recipe for zucchini crisps for the first time. Mine weren’t crispy, but they had a good flavor.

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Popcorn and hot chocolate. This is pretty random, but I’m trying to clear out my pantry and freezer before we move. So I’m eating weird combinations of things that I might not ordinarily. Like lime flavored popcorn and hot chocolate. Which is not as tasty as pork rinds and chocolate milk, but similar idea.

There were other meals, but I’ve been really bad about taking food pics this year. Will try to do better this week.

A few things I want to make/ try this week-
New hummus recipe
My favorite shrimp salad or shrimp and grits
Something with steak
Egg and mushroom bake
Something with quinoa, possibly tabbouleh

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for dinner? Vol. 11

I took a hiatus on WFD during Thanksgiving, but I’m back and ready for some menu planning goodness! Okay I know I’m the only one remotely excited about menu planning, but that’s okay :P.

I’ve been continuing with the Menu Mailer on and off the past couple of weeks. Still eating lots more veggies when I do that, so yay! This week’s MM wasn’t really inspiring me much, so I decided to do something a little different. Each week I print out the MM and mark the recipes I want to make and write down any changes or substitutions. (I always substitute chicken for turkey recipes, etc.) So this week I took out my recipe pile and picked our favorites from the past month and made our menus from that. I want to start some kind of file or list with our favorites for weeks that I’m not inspired by anything.

Also, we’ve started doing the grocery shopping on Friday, so it makes more since to post my WFD on Fridays or Saturdays now.

Here’s the plan for next week-

Friday– Ladies Night/ Burritos for Jason
Saturday– Beefy Mushroom Soup
Sunday– Crock Pot Steak or Pizza
Monday– Creole steak soup
Tuesday– Pork Chops with mustard sauce
Wednesday– Garlic Basil Chicken, Zuccini from Kaylin’s recipe
Thursday– Stir-fry
Friday– Bacon mushroom chicken sandwiches or Checker’s

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for dinner? Vol. 10

Here was the plan for last week.

Sunday– Crock pot steak
Monday– Bacon and Mushroom Chicken Breasts with Kaylin’s roasted zucchini and feta
Tuesday– Mushroom stuffed peppers
Wednesday– Pork chops with mustard sauce
Thursday– Creamy Lemon Chicken
Friday– Checker’s or something garbage-y
Saturday– Ravioli soup

This is what actually happened.

Menu-Mailer week was a success. I’m going to try it for at least one more week. I’m really liking getting more variety in our dinners. And a ton more veggies, thanks to the side suggestions. I don’t always follow the recipes or the side suggestions exactly, but it’s a great starting point. One thing that I need to be wary of is portion sizes. Sometimes the meals that are supposed to feed 4 people just barely feed both of us. Also I’m going to make more carb-y sides for Jason. He doesn’t complain, but I know he gets weary of meat + veggies every single night.

Sunday we had crock pot steak (my favorite way to cook steak because I’m very bad at cooking it in a pan. I added broccoli and cauliflower, black-eyed peas, and biscuits.

Monday we had bacon wrapped chicken breasts, red potatoes (frozen), and my very favorite zucchini recipe from Kaylin’s Kitchen. It was really tasty and I think I’ll make something similar again, this time with cheese.

Tuesday was Election Night. We were so stressed out that we made an executive decision to have Checker’s.

Wednesday night we had stuffed peppers. They were good, but not at all filling. We had pinto beans and corn as sides.

Thursday night I made pork chops with mustard sauce. I was expecting it to be really tasty, but once I cooked them, I noticed they had an odd smell. We decided to err on the side of caution and tossed them. We had the planned sides, green beans and mashed potatoes. I usually make two kinds of green beans since Jason likes canned and I like fresh.

We almost always have frozen rolls with little sausages in the middle for emergencies so we had those as well.

Friday we practiced great self-restraint and didn’t go for a second round of Checkers in one week. Instead I made crock pot lemon chicken and green beans. I also made lemony rice and asparagus cooked my favorite way with pesto.

Saturday we had a busy day with errands. We got preoccupied with file management (me) and the Force Unleashed (Jason) and forgot all about dinner until late. So we did our old standby of PB&J and cereal.

Here’s this week’s menu-

Sunday– Beef and Mushroom soup
Monday– Chicken stir fry
Tuesday– Pork kabobs
Wednesday– Tilapia with apples and peppers
Thursday– Crock pot Lemon Chicken
Friday– Ravioli soup. Or possibly Checker’s.
Saturday– Date night!

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for dinner? Vol. 9

The past two weeks were pretty hit or miss food wise. Here are a few of the highlights.

Frozen perigees. I seriously need to learn to make these from scratch.

I made some chicken and dumplings. Overcooked them 😦

Thai Chicken pizza with sweet cucumber salad.

I think we had pizza two or three times in one week.

We brought sushi home from Publix one afternoon. It’s our first sushi in the new place. Why did we wait so long?

Hers and his hot chocolate and coffee.

We had chili and quesadillas for dinner Halloween night. The quesadillas are supposed to look like candy corns, but I got the wrong kind of cheese. They were tasty anyway.

And then there was Halloween candy…

I also made my Chicken Noodle Soup, Megan’s chicken tikka marsala, and My Aunt Marsha’s sausage dip, but forgot to take pics of the finished products.

So that was the last couple of weeks. Here is the plan for this week.

I had a lot of things on my brain Friday and was not in the mood to come up with a menu. Whenever that happens I turn to my trusty Menu Mailer. Someone else comes up with the menu and the grocery list. All I have to do is shop and cook. I’ve bought almost all of Leanne Ely’s cookbooks and I’ve been a Menu Mailer subscriber on and off for years. Some of my very favorite recipes have been from Leanne.

The only downside of using the Menu Mailers is that it means I actually have to cook real food, as opposed to throwing a box of something in the oven. It’s time consuming, but way better for us.

Sunday– Crock pot steak
Monday– Bacon and Mushroom Chicken Breasts with Kaylin’s roasted zucchini and feta
Tuesday– Mushroom stuffed peppers
Wednesday– Pork chops with mustard sauce
Thursday– Creamy Lemon Chicken
Friday– Checker’s or something garbage-y
Saturday– Ravioli soup

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s For Dinner? Vol. 8

Wow it feels good to cook again! (Let’s see if I’m still saying that next week. I’m sure the newness will have worn off by then).

For the next couple of weeks I’m going to really try and clear out my freezer and pantry. I go a little crazy for BOGO sales, so our freezer is pretty packed. And I’m pretty sure I still have cans of stuff in the cabinets from before we moved here in April. So it’s time to do some Fall Cleaning.

Here was the Plan for last week-
Sunday– Chicken noodle soup
Monday– Homemade pizza
Tuesday– Tacos
Wednesday– Apricot chicken and broccoli casserole
Thursday– Fish Tacos
Friday– Crock pot chicken, either mine, or I might try to revamp Megan’s tikka marsala for the crock pot, depending on how fancy I’m feeling and if I can find pita bread
Saturday– Shrimp and grits

Here’s what actually happened-
Sunday, I made my quick and easy Chicken noodle soup. This made a ton and we ate on it all week.

Monday I made my homemade pizza with beef instead of sausage. I had a bunch of tomatoes, so I made the sauce fresh.

Tuesday we had tacos. I kind of like theme nights, like Pizza night with football on Sundays or Mondays, and Taco Tuesdays. I’ve menu planned like that since I started cooking on my own, many years ago. We had our TV delivered that day so I wanted something quick and easy.
Wednesday we had so much food left over from earlier this week so we just had leftover smorgasbord night.

Thursday I made Jason’s very favorite meal, Apricot Chicken with Broccoli Casserole and macaroni. I’ll post my casserole recipe this week. The chicken recipe can be found here.
Friday we did grocery shopping, so we had Checker’s. I don’t know why we don’t do that every Friday night. We clearly have no social life.  But it’s ok because there are hardly any people at the store when we went, so that was nice.
Also I saw the first eggnog of the season! We could have some serious marital discord over eggnog. I like this kind and Jason likes the disgusting stuff in the can. Which fresh is always best. Well actually fresh boiled custard is the best best, but I don’t think you can get boiled custard outside of Tennessee. I might try my hand at making some this winter.
Saturday we had lunch at Costco, and dinner was taquitos.

Here’s the Plan for next week. 

Sunday– Megan’s chicken tikka marsala in the crock pot
Monday– Thai Chicken pizza
Tuesday– Megan’s homemade chicken and noodles
Wednesday– Fish Tacos
Thursday– Marinated pork chops
Friday– Shrimp salad or out to eat
Saturday– Spaghetti

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for Dinner? Vol. 7

Things are getting back to normal around here, so I’m going to start cooking the majority of the food again. This week I’m going to try to make mostly dinners that I can make in stages a little at a time throughout the day, instead of standing at the stove for a long time. That’s the plan anyway.

I’m also still working on having a salad (almost) every day. It’s nice to eat some of my old favorites and trying a few new combinations. I’m especially loving salads with berries, and some with shrimp. So yummy!

Here’s the plan for this week-

Sunday– Chicken noodle soup
MondayHomemade pizza
Tuesday– Tacos
Wednesday– Apricot chicken and broccoli casserole
ThursdayFish Tacos
Friday– Crock pot chicken, either mine, or I might try to revamp Megan’s tikka marsala for the crock pot, depending on how fancy I’m feeling and if I can find pita bread
Saturday– Shrimp and grits

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for Dinner? Vol. 6

So dinners are going to be a little different for a while. Jason is doing a lot of the cooking right now, so I’m going to skip the “plan” part of these posts and just say what we ate, if it’s interesting.

We ate out more in the past week than we ever do. Costco, Burger King, Chinese food, Applebee’s plus some frozen stuff, fish, taquitos and salisbury steak, and Caribbean rice from a mix. Also I didn’t get a lot of photos of food this week.

Jason made some awesome Ziti and garlic bread with mango and raspberry shortcake. Sooo good! I made Jason’s Tuscan White Bean Soup. And those are the only “real” meals we had last week.

I also made a super tasty salad on Friday. I have a sort of goal to eat a salad every day for the rest of the month. I seriously need to add more veggies into my diet.

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.

What’s for dinner? vol. 5

Here was the plan for last week. Apparently I forgot Tuesday 😛

Sunday- Costco pizza
Monday- Shrimp and Grits (to be blogged)
Wednesday- Veggie Samosas
Thursday- Something from my new rice cooker
Friday- Fish Tacos
Saturday- Crock Pot Chicken

Here is what actually happened-

Okay I totally spaced this week and didn’t take many pictures. And without pictures I have no memory jogs so I’ll just put up the pics I did take and move on.

I looovveee Costco hot dogs. And FroYo. And I don’t drink soda much anymore except when we go to Costco because I need a little boost. Or that’s what I tell myself.

This was a rough week for Jason with having to work late and a couple of trips trying to buy me pretty things (which I’ll tell you about tomorrow). So we had some junky frozen food. I’m clearly no food snob, this dinner came completely out of boxes and cans.

Probably the most exciting thing we ate last week was Megan from the Nerd Nest’s Veggie Samosas. And apparently I’ve been using puff pastry instead of phyllo dough for weeks and didn’t realize it. But omg it was delicious anyway! I think next time I make them I’ll freeze a few for the future.

I made some rice pilaf in my new rice cooker to go along with the samosas. I sort of made things up as I went along and it turned out pretty well.

I made tacos Saturday night and we had taco salads for lunch the next day.

In other super exciting news that I know everyone cares about, I had my first Fall coffee drink from Starbucks this week. Salty Caramel! Love it! Y’all can keep your pumpkin spice whatever drinks, Salty Caramel is the only way to go. 🙂

So here’s the plan for next week-

Sunday- PB&J… yeah I know. We were tired.
Monday- homemade deep dish pizza (need to post recipe)
Tuesday- Chili
Wednesday- Sweet and Sour pork (recipe from my rice cooker cookbook)
Thursday- Italian baked fish
Friday- Shrimp and grits
Saturday- more frozen salisbury steak or Crock Pot Chicken, depending on what we do that day

Since this is my fifth “What’s for Dinner?” I guess it qualifies to have it’s own footer now.

You can find more What’s for Dinner? posts here.