Menu Planning Monday

     Sorry this is late, but better late than never. We have some yummy recipes to try this week and (big shocker), they're not all from the Skinny Taste cookbook. And making a rare appearance... a dessert recipe. And it's a good one! You gotta make it! If you like chocolate and peanut butter even a little bit. 

Monday: Sweet n' spicy Sriracha-glazed salmon. This recipe is from the Skinny Taste cookbook and not on her blog, but lucky for you, I found the recipe elsewhere on the Internet. We just had this tonight and it was really good and super easy. Just make sure to let the salmon marinate at least an hour before you want to cook it. I served it with stir-fried carrots, onion, broccoli, orange bell pepper, and red cabbage. Owen was a bit picky about it, but Graham scarfed the salmon like I hadn't fed him all day. 

Tuesday: Corny blueberry banana pancakes. This is a Skinny Taste cookbook-only recipe, but she has other pancake recipes on the blog if you're interested. We'll see how these go over since Owen has decided he suddenly does not like blueberries anymore.
Wednesday: Crock pot chicken enchilada soup (except with ground beef instead...because there is a quarter of a cow in my freezer). This is one of our favorite soups and I am interested to see how it will taste with ground beef. We have small group so I'm making this because it's easy. And for dessert.... hold onto your hats, folks... Chocolate and peanut butter lover's brownies. This recipe is from my new Seriously Delish cookbook from Jessica Merchant at How Sweet Eats. It's not on her blog, but I did find the recipe online elsewhere for you to check out. Tim and I made them last week for a work potluck and they.were.amazing. Like, thank goodness he took all but one to work so that I didn't eat the whole pan by myself while hiding in my closet from the children. 

Thursday: Thai chicken lettuce wraps. This is another recipe from my new cookbook that I made last week. It made a ton of extra sauce so I froze half so I could make it again this week. She doesn't have the exact recipe on the blog, but if you use the recipe above and basically substitute chicken for the butternut squash, you'll have what I'm making. It's super yummy. 
Friday: Coconut chicken salad with warm honey mustard vinaigrette. This is an older recipe that I've made several times. It's super quick and yummy. I plan on feeding the kids the chicken strips with baked sweet potato fries and salads for Tim and I. 

Saturday: Chicken fajitas with poblano peppers. Tim and I went to a Mexican restaurant last week for dinner and he had this stuffed poblano peppers dinner except it wasn't a stuffed pepper as much as a stir fry with cut up poblano peppers and it was so yummy. So I decided to try to make it at home. This is basically it, so we'll see. 

Homemade Vapor Rub

This week I decided to try a brand new recipe using my essential oils. It was super easy to make and made a lot! I really don't like using the conventional vapor rub you can buy at the store because it contains petroleum products, so when I saw a recipe for making it at home, I knew I had to try it. 

Here are the ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup coconut oil

3/4 cup grated beeswax (I grated a one ounce bar and that was equal to 3/4 c.)

35 drops R.C. essential oil blend (or Raven or Ravintsara or a combination)

30 drops peppermint

15 drops lavender

 I melted the olive oil, coconut oil and beeswax in a Pyrex bowl over a pot of boiling water since I don't have a double boiler. It took a pretty good while for the beeswax to melt, but the recipe was not difficult at all. After it had all melted, I removed it from the stove and set it down to cool a bit before adding the essential oils. But make sure to keep an eye on it so that it doesn't start to harden up before you've poured it into your containers. 

This recipe makes a little more than 10 ounces of vapor rub. I bought three 2 ounce containers from Amazon for it, but still had enough leftover to fill a 4 ounce mason jar as well. I've been using it this week and it's really helping with Graham's congestion. 

Menu Planning Monday

I am going a lot of cooking from the new cookbook that I mentioned last week. I am really excited to try some new recipes (3 out of six). My weeks are running only Monday through Saturday now because I tend to menu plan on Saturdays now so that we can go grocery shopping after church since it's located so close to Kroger and saves me time during the week. So in case you were wondering what we had last Sunday, it was tacos. And this coming Sunday's meal will be planned later this week. 
     Last week, Heather asked how I was able to cook all these meals with two little ones. Honestly, I don't do too much prep ahead of time and I am fortunate that my boys will play independently in Owen's room while I cook for most of the time. And when all else fails, I put on a thirty minute episode of The Wild Kratt's to occupy them while I get whatever prepped and in the oven or on the stove. Soups are good because you just chop everything up quickly and put it in the pot to simmer. I do make double of some recipes so that I can make meals quicker on week days. For instance, this week I am making the chicken parmesan with a doubled recipe of the marina sauce from my freezer and I will be doubling the meatballs for my meatball soup this weekend so that I will have a second set of meatballs ready for if I make that on a weeknight sometime. 

Monday: Thai chicken lettuce wraps. This is a new recipe from the Seriously Delish cookbook. It looks pretty quick and easy, which is important during the week when Tim doesn't get home until six and the kids are running around my feet crying and fighting.

Tuesday: BBQ chicken chili. This is also a recipe from the Seriously Delish cookbook. I first ran into it though on the Skinny Taste blog where the blogger there posted the recipe because she and the author are friends. Tim and I both really liked it and since the weather is so cold lately, it is the perfect time to make chili. 

Wednesday: Chicken parmesan with roasted vegetables. This is a Skinny Taste recipe that is the best chicken parmesan I have ever made at home. It's baked so it's healthier and I make my own marinara sauce as well to cut down on sugar and extra sodium from jarred sauce. We also don't serve it with pasta, but instead with roasted carrots, red onion, broccoli and cauliflower and then top with some shaved parmesan. It's delicious! The husband gives is two thumbs up and even the kiddos like it (though it helps that I told Owen is it actually called pizza chicken, but you do whatever works).

Thursday: Creamy slow cooker chicken noodle soup. This recipe had me at "slow cooker." I am so interested to see how this turns out. It is from the Seriously Delish cookbook and contains all the normal ingredients for chicken noodle soup. Again, it sounds great during all the cold weather we've been having. 

Friday: Lemon herb chicken romano. This is another new recipe from the Seriously Delish cookbook, but you can also find it on her blog How Sweet Eats. I looks really tasty and although not super healthy, we'll be having it with vegetables again and not pasta to save on calories. Plus, my kids won't eat noodles. They're weird like that. 

  

Saturday: Italian meatball soup. This is a Pioneer Woman recipe that I make all the time now because it is Owen's favorite recipe that I make and he asks for it a lot. It has lots of vegetables so how could I say no? If you want the recipe, you can check back on some of my past Menu Planning Monday posts to find it. Odds are you'll find it pretty quickly. 

And that's it for this week! What are you cooking?

Menu Planning Monday

I am finally back home after two weeks visiting my parents, in-laws, and friends back in Georgia. Tim and the kids and I are all happy to be back together and in our normal routine. I am also excited to be trying out some new recipes from some of the cookbooks that I got for Christmas. It is going to be super cold this week so we will be having soup at least three times. Plus, Tim bought a quarter of a cow's worth of beef from a guy he works with and our freezer is super full, so we will be having a lot more beef recipes than normal over the next few months. 

Monday: Aztec chicken, quinoa and avocado soup. We have had this a million times lately because it is just that good. Again, it is from the Skinny Taste cookbook so I can't post a photo of it or a link to the recipe. 
Tuesday: Mongolian beef and broccoli. This is another recipe from the Skinny Taste cookbook. It doesn't taste exactly like the kind you get from the Chinese food restaurant (does anything you can make at home?), but it is super delicious and fresh-tasting. 
Wednesday: Southwest black bean soup. This is a recipe from a new cookbook that I got for Christmas. It's called "Seriously Delish" by Jessica Merchant, the blogger at How Sweet Eats. 

Thursday: Lomo Saltado. This is a really unusual and delicious recipe from the Skinny Taste blog. I am making it to use some of the beef from our freezer stockpile, but it's really yummy and quick to make too. 

Friday: Stuffed pepper soup. This is an older Skinny Taste recipe that I have never tried until now. I've had it bookmarked for a while, but never got around to making it. Now that we're having such bitter cold weather, I think a new soup is in order. Plus, we can use one of the a million pounds of ground beef that we have in the freezer. 

Saturday: Homemade pizza. We'll be making regular old cheese and pepperoni pizza for the boys, but Tim and I will be having a recipe from the cookbook I linked to above. I made it while at my parent's house for New Year's Eve and it was super delicious. It is a pineapple and jalapeno pizza, but I added chicken to it. The sauce is delicious blend of barbecue sauce, shallots, brown sugar and garlic. Yum! 

What are you eating this week? Any new fun recipes? Trying to keep it healthy for the New Year? Let me know in the comments! 

Elf escapades!

Our Elf on the Shelf has been getting into some interesting shenanigans this week so I wanted to share in case others were looking for ideas on what to do with the little stinker. Our elf has been really fun to pose and set up each night so that Owen can find him in the morning and he is starting to really get into finding the elf in the morning and seeing what he is up to. I'm just happy that I have so far remembered to move him every night. Alas, our elf still does not have a name because Owen can only come up with nonsense words or potty humor (I have refused to let him name the elf Poot or Potty). He also turns down anything I come up with. 
      Here are photos from our first full week of Elf on the Shelf:

Day 1: Our elf arrived with a brand new Christmas shirt and a countdown letting us know there were 24 days until Christmas.   

Day 2: Our elf brought Owen a Frozen coloring book and some crayons. The elf was coloring one of the pages and as Owen said, "My elf doesn't color very well." 

Day 3: Our elf was a bit mischievous on Wednesday. He drew mustaches and other silliness on our family photo wall. Papa Elf may have gotten into this and helped.  

 Our elf turned baby Graham into Harry Potter. 

 And Owen was turned into a fisherman. 

 Our elf doesn't have the best balance, so he had to be taped to the wall. He actually fell down during the night and scared the daylights out of me.

Here, one-year-old Owen is turned into Batman and is one of our favorite presents ever. 

Day 4: Elf added two books to our extensive Christmas book collection: Little Blue Truck Christmas and Llama Llama Holiday Drama. 

Day 5: Our elf brought Owen a pile of coins to put in his piggy bank. According to the note he left, the elf has been collecting change he sees on the sidewalks every night when he flies back to the North Pole. Owen got a particularly big kick out of the note and asked me to read it to him a dozen times that day. The notes were downloaded from Who-Arted.com. 

Day 6: Our elf made a mess in the kitchen, making snow angels in a pile of flour. He also brought us a box of pancake mix so we could have a nice pancake breakfast together as a family on Saturday morning. 

 Day 7: Our elf was found perched in our Christmas tree after having decorated it while we were sleeping. 

Day 8: Elf made Owen some snowmen out of donuts for breakfast. This was a particularly fun elf treat to create (once again, Papa Elf got into this one) and Owen of course, was obsessed with the note from the elf and made me read it to him a million times. He honestly was so excited about it that he just sat at the kitchen table and talked about the snowmen and the note for almost an hour without even eating them. 

 We set everything up at his place at the table so it was ready when he got up in the morning. Tim added a Reese's wrapper hat and a tiny scarf to the snowmen. 

The bodies are made of two small powdered donuts and the heads are donut holes. The arms are pretzel sticks, the nose is a piece of carrot, and the eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons are black sprinkles. 

This is the face of one happy kid. He's the cutest. Christmas is so much fun now that he's old enough to get into the spirit. 

Menu Planning Monday

This is really late, but I figured better late than never for those that like seeing our menu for each week and checking out some new recipes. 

Monday: P90x Island pork tenderloin, sauteed brussels sprouts and sweet potato fries. This is a really yummy pork recipe and it's super easy. I shredded the brussels sprouts and sauteed them in olive oil with minced garlic and we also had sweet potato fries from Trader Joe's. 
Tuesday: Cheeseburger salad. This is a Pioneer Woman recipe that we all really like. It's super quick and easy, which is important on weeknights when Tim doesn't come home until after six and the kids start going nuts. 

Wednesday: We will be having taco night at our friends' house. 
Thursday: Chicken enchilada soup. Surprise surprise, a Skinny Taste recipe. This is one of our favorites though and it's a crock pot recipe so I can make it in the morning and then not have to worry about dinner in the evening. 

Friday: Pasta with butternut squash, spicy sausage, and spinach. Have you ever seen a recipe and thought, "That looks weird and interesting and unlike anything I would ever make?" and then decided to try it anyway? Well, that's how I came across this recipe. It's actually really good in a weird way and pretty healthy for a pasta dish. Give it a shot. 

Saturday: Chicken parmesan with roasted vegetables. This is from the Skinny Taste cookbook and is so simple that it's ridiculous that it tastes as good as it does. It's one of my favorite recipes from the entire cookbook. 

Menu Planning Monday

We are back from Thanksgiving vacation with family and are ready to get back into our normal routine and eat a little more healthfully (don't mind the pasta this week...) We are trying one new recipe and the rest are old favorites. I will include links and pictures when I can. 

Monday: Fig Balsamic Roasted Pork Tenderloin with mashed potatoes and sauteed brussels sprouts. This is a new Skinny Taste recipe from her blog and one that I'm really excited about as a simple, yet filling and flavorful weeknight meal. While I was in town visiting my parents, I stopped by Trader Joe's so I could get the fig butter used in this recipe. 

Tuesday: Rustic Italian Gnocchi Soup. This is a recipe from the Skinny Taste cookbook. We made it a couple weeks ago and really liked it so we are taking it to a friend's house on Tuesday for small group.

Wednesday: Creamy Basil Chicken Pasta. Basically, I am making this recipe, except I use jarred pesto to save time and I add chicken for protein. We'll have it with Skinny Taste's house salad. 

Thursday: Taco meatloaf with turmeric-roasted cauliflower and black beans. This is a Paula Deen recipe that I have made since Tim and I first got married and it is one of his favorite meals. The cauliflower recipe is from the Skinny Taste cookbook. It's really yummy. 

Friday: Aztec chicken soup. Another Skinny Taste recipe from the cookbook. 

Saturday: Chicken broccoli casserole. This is a really good Skinny Taste recipe from the blog. I make mine with mozzarella instead of cheddar cheese and really like it that way. 

     I haven't made plans for Sunday yet. We tend to go grocery shopping after church on Sundays so we might wait and do it this weekend so we have fresher ingredients for dinner that night. What do you think about the menu this week? What are you eating?