Menu-Planning and Meatless Mondays

My menu plan this week was pretty easy as we share Thanksgiving dinner at two different houses on two different days so I only needed to come up with five meals this week.  We end up with left overs from both houses so I probably will get some turkey for lunches.
Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only times I will go off my meatless diet to eat Turkey..I take a lot of Benedryl to make me feel the symptoms of my allergy less.  If worse comes to worse I end up really sick and down a day..but hey..I love me the turkey!

Meatless Monday-Vegetarian Minestrone

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped celery
1 cup carrots, diced

1 small zucchini, diced
1 garlic clove, minced

1/2 cup barley
4 cups vegetable broth
1 large tomato, seeded and chopped

1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes
1/2 cup chopped kale
1 can (16 ounces) canned white beans, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup uncooked small shell pasta

Salt and Pepper to taste
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion, celery and carrots and saute until softened, about 5 minutes.

Add garlic and continue cooking for another minute then add the barley.

Stir in broth, tomatoes, kale, and beans. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes then add pasta. Add zucchini. Cover and cook for 5 minutes more.

Remove from heat and stir in the basil. Ladle into individual bowls and serve immediately.

Tuesday-Chicken/Rice/Green Beans

Wednesday-Spaghetti

Thursday-Family dinner

Friday-Eat out (I promised Jake BW3's for good grades)

Saturday-Family Dinner

Sunday-Potato Pierogi

Menu-Planning

So yesterday I talked about how I was a resentful bitch and what I was going to do to help myself..

One of the thing I talked about was making a meal plan for the week..Its a little difficult for me to meal plan because I can't eat meat yet the rest of my family feels very deprived if I completely take meat off the table.  I get around this by trying to make every other meal meatless or a meal that I can extract the meat from..like Tacos or Stir Fry.

Here's my meal's for the week:

Saturday: Smashed Potato Soup (ala @NotSuperJustMom) with skillet corn bread and a garden salad.  (I had to do some recipe modifications, I used veggie broth and veggie cream of mushroom soup and took out the bacon bits.  I also added garlic just because no recipe is complete without it!

Sunday: Chicken & Pressure Cooker Rice with Steamed Broccoli and Sweet Potato Pie (Double rice and chicken for Thursday's meal)

Meatless Monday: Angel Hair Pasta with Citrus Cream Sauce/steamed green beans

Tuesday:  Taco Tuesday with Refried beans

Wednesday:  Three Cheese Skillet Lasagne/garden salad/garlic bread

Thursday:  Stir Fry

Friday:   Potato Pierogi with mushrooms and onions/garden salad.

Potato Pierogi Recipe:

1lb Potato and Cheese Pierogi (I like Mrs. T's...when I visited Canada this summer I made them with the generic SuperValu brand and they were good too!)
Olive Oil
8 ounces of fresh mushrooms sliced (you can mix it up and use a variety like Shitake, Portebellas, and Button)
1 onion chopped
2 tsp crushed garlic
2 TBS Sherry  4 oz shredded Cobly-Jack (or anything you have on hand)
Sour Cream-Optional

Preheat oven to broil.

Put some olive oil in a large saute pan* and heat up to medium-high, saute onion for 2 minutes then add mushrooms and garlic.  Cook until mushroom soften then add sherry and pierogi.  Cook pierogi for about 5 minutes on oneside, then flip over and cook for 5 minutes more.

Take off heat and place in a broil proof dish and cover with cheese.  Broil for 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

*My saute pan can be placed in the oven so I just top the pierogi with the cheese and just pop it into the oven. 


Good eating everyone..if you want recipes for anything else I'm making this week, leave a comment and I'll post it for you!

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...

I view Sunday as my day of rest..It's my day of doing what ever I want..sleeping in until noon, staying in my PJ's all day, baking, taking 3 hour baths, reading..what ever I want!!
I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do today but I did get some baking done. Whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies..(insert your imagined picture here because I forgot to take some!)

Here's the recipe that I feel I've perfected over the last 30 years or so...
When I bake I'm all about easy does it.  I have a fabric box that contains all my dry baking ingredients so all I have to do is pull it out and everything is there. I use butcher's paper under my mixer and measure out my dry ingredients on it so I can just throw it out after. I also use parchment paper on my cookie sheets, so I can just wipe them off when I'm done baking..its all about the easy at my house!

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter-softened
8 TBS butter flavored Crisco (I know..terrible but they are softer this way)
3/4 C packed light brown sugar
3/4 C sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp vanilla (I always add a dash more)
2 1/4 C unbleached flour
2 C of chocolate chips
1 C nuts if you like them
Preheat oven to 375 degrees

Beat butter, Crisco, and both sugars until creamy, add eggs until combined. Then add in baking soda, salt, and vanilla. Gradually add flour to mixture..once combined add chocolate chips and nuts (optional).  Drop cookie dough on to a cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

I use a small cookie scoop to place dough on the cookie sheets.  Also, I take the cookies out when they are a little lighter in color and leave the cookies on the sheet for about 3 minutes.  This allows the cookies to keep cooking but not get to crunchy..my family likes soft almost mushy cookies.