Weekly Recipes

What I cooked this week...

With two kids home again I'm back to that grind of "what can I make that will please everyone..." It's never easy to please everyone, even when that means only 4 people.  I like it when those four/five people eat the food that I prepare with minimal fuss/pickiness.  Working full-time to come home and prepare dinner, I want that sit-down affair to be a happy time.

For a year and 1/2 teenage boy was living on his on in Colorado and it was just husband and I with Groovy Girl to attend to and I could cater my meals in her direction.  My husband literally will eat most everything set in front of him as long as it's not peanut butter or shellfish.

We are ecstatically happy that Teenage Boy returned home to go back to school even though he does throw a new twist into my meal plan.  If I went way back to early blog posts he is the one who "asked" us to think about eating meat. He played sports and as an active young male he begged, pleaded, and begged some more for me to add meat into our diet.

I don't mind meat as long as it comes from a healthy and local source, which also makes it expensive.  We can't do meat every night (which is what Teenage Boy would like).  He can through a meatless meal if pasta is involved.

The last couple of years I've tried to stay away from so much gluten. We've ruined wheat and it makes it hard to enjoy bread, pasta, sandwiches, and a nice cold beer.  It's okay; I've found many other delicious pleasures like hard cider, but it makes meal planning that much more interesting.

With all our different preferences it makes it difficult to plan the perfect meal.  It takes creativity and ingenuity.  And sometimes I just have to have a salad and be happy with that.  It's all good.

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1. Calzones: I made these on Monday night when husband was not home and I needed a purely kid-friendly dinner.  I mixed two recipes together and Groovy Girl did the calzone part on her own for both.  I made a lovely salad for myself and let the kids enjoy the cheesy, steamy calzones. They loved them. I used this pizza dough and filled it with good sausage, marinara, black olives, and cheese. Will make again especially because GG did all the work.

2. Artichoke and spinach pasta: This we enjoyed all together. Love it when we are all at the table as one. We had a salad so I could have just had that but the pasta looked and smelled amazing so I had a small portion.  Yum! The family ate it up. Again I combined two recipes from Pinterest: food network and budget savvy diva; I used what I wanted from both recipes making it as natural as possible. I used real spinach, 1 can of artichokes, parmesan shredded, fettuccine noodles, and a little cream cheese to add creaminess.  The roux was easy to make and the people at my table had 3-4 helpings.  I filled my plate with salad and had a small amount of pasta to try it. (meatless)

3. Bean burritos: I created these one night using quinoa, a can of black beans with sautéed sweet peppers mixed in.  The kids ate these with flour tortillas and I had corn, tastier, to me, and a much smaller portion. (meatless)

4. Stir-fry: This cleaned out my vegetable drawer; the last few spears of asparagus, last stalk of broccoli and cauliflower, a few peppers, a jar of Trader Joe's simmer sauce, a pot of brown rice and we had dinner at the table in record time.  I mixed in a little coconut milk for a change of pace and to tame the simmer sauce a bit for Groovy Girl. They didn't even know they were eating "leftovers".  (meatless)

5. Black bean soup: this is for tomorrow.  I cooked down a pound of black beans earlier in the week.

So all-in-all it was a creative week of meals at our house. And the BB soup will be a wonderful way to begin the week because it can be used in a variety of ways. How was your food week?