Helpful Site: ingredientcritic.com

I was looking for some nutrition info on parsnips and came across this site:

Ingredient Critic
http://ingredientcritic.com/spicy-healthy-crunchy-parsnips

Helpful!  I still want a more basic breakdown of the numbers (sugars, carbs, protein, etc) but there is some helpful info here, particularly if I'm venturing into cooking with a completely new ingredient, like when we had the CSA and I had kohlrabi staring me in the face for the first time (scary!)

Meals: 29 December-14 January

We are still in the odd scheduling of the holidays, so I'm doing a bunch of meal planning all at once.  I haven't been great about sticking to the plans, but I still find it helpful to chart something out so that I have a plan in case we end up staying in.  I've been shopping every few days so that I don't have a produce overstock issue.

Tonight
Tim has a band practice and I'm out with my grandparents in the afternoon... it might be a pizza night.  We'll see if I come up with anything before then.

Friday
Burgerville :)

Saturday
Chicken Caesar Salad

Sunday
Scramble - We are going to a wedding!!  I'm planning a light, easy dinner, since it's an early evening wedding and we'll be having CAKE before dinner.  :)

2-14 January 2012
2012.  Gulp.  :)  I want to get this planned out so that I can get some shopping done, but our schedules are busy enough that I'm not going map it out to the day.  I'm just making a list of some meal thoughts and I'll shop as necessary.

- Slow-Cooker Vegetable Stew (new recipe!)

- Taco Salad

- Ham, Cottage Cheese, Pickles, Bell Peppers

- Salmon, Tomato Salad, Cranberry Sauce

- Steak Quesadillas

- Tilapia, Steamed Asparagus, Cheddar Cheese

There are definitely some holes in there, but it feels good to have a frame set up for the majority of the meals.  My Sam the Cooking Guy books are overdue to the library, so I'll be copying some of those recipes down and hopefully getting some of those into rotation soon.

How do you approach the post-holiday food planning?  Do you just naturally fall back into a great rhythm, or does it take a while to break that food cravings?  Leave me a comment with any suggestions you have for making this go smoothly.

Happy Holidays!

Meals: 18-25 December

Holiday food!  I'm already starting to feel like I might need to eat something other than cookies to give my body a break.  I am inclined to make meals that are very simple to counteract the richness of holiday foods.  Here's what I have sketched out for next week:

Sunday
Peanut chicken with sprouts and veggies - it's kind of like a Thai stir-fry that I like to throw together.  It's very simple.

Monday
Tilapia, bell pepper slices, string cheese

Tuesday
Advent devotions - we'll have dinner with my grandparents

Wednesday
Community Group - I don't know yet what is on the menu.  Last week we had an amazing spread of stir-fry dishes, sushi, and fried rice.

Thursday
Winter Fritatta (new recipe!) and I'm going to try making Pumpkin Parfaits ... we'll see!

Friday
Pizza quesadilla

Saturday - Christmas Eve
Tim and Sophie and I will be going with my grandpa to serve a meal at a homeless shelter.  We'll probably make a big batch of stew and we'll eat dinner with my grandparents before we take the stew downtown.

Sunday - Christmas Day
I don't know precisely what is on the menu, but no one goes hungry at Grandma's!  My guess is we'll have a bit meal around 2:00P and dinner will be something light (like sandwiches).

I'm thinking of making breakfast burritos on Christmas morning.  I would love to make cinnamon rolls or something festive like that, but I'm thinking by that point in our week we might need a break from the sugar.  Maybe I'll do cinnamon rolls to celebrate the first day of Tim's Christmas break.

What holiday food traditions do you have?  Do you have a classic turkey dinner on Christmas?  Is there a special breakfast that you prepare, or a special cookie that you know you will make every year?  Leave me a comment with your food celebrations.

Merry Christmas!!!

Meals: 13-17 December

I'm sitting down again to plan a week of meals and realizing that this will be fairly easy for a few reasons:

1. The week is almost half over already!

2. We are again so busy that there aren't really that many at-home meals to plan.

3. We just went to Trader Joe's and explored the frozen foods section together, so I always have Palak Paneer as a great backup plan.

So it's quick, simple, and no real pressure.  Love it.  Here are the meals:

Tuesday
Advent!  Dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's (I heard a rumor of soup and sandwiches).

Wednesday
Community Group - I signed up to bring steamed rice, iced tea, and ginger-pork-apple stir-fry.

Thursday
Tim's busy and Sophie and I are headed to a bridal shower.  Sophie and I will probably have something in the late afternoon - something like pinto beans and green beans and jelly beans!  (just kidding about the jelly beans.)

Friday
Christmas party

Saturday
Chicken Chili - a new recipe I'm trying from "Sam the Cooking Guy"  We'll see how it goes.  I bought some chicken thighs at Costco because they were cheaper, and I'm missing my all-white meat tenders.  I'm planning soups and quesadillas and such to use up the thighs and then go back to my favorite (albeit expensive) tenders.

Stay tuned for next weeks meals.  That post is due tomorrow.  I should probably start working now to get a running start.

Meals: 29 November-3 December

The most wonderful, busy, crazy, fun time of the year is here!  We had company the week of Thanksgiving and it was lovely.  I decided to brave a week without a plan and it went smoothly.  I had stocked up on salad ingredients and chicken sausages and peppers and that plus the classic turkey dinner on Thursday got us through the week with no problems.

Reality is setting back in and I spent way too much time yesterday trying to come up with a dinner.  I don't like that!  This week is also really busy so I have a few (lots) of meals out planned.  It feels good just to get it down in a plan though, no matter what we are having.

Tuesday
Minestrone with Turkey Kielbasa - it's definitely soup weather and this is one of Tim's favorites.  It's also quick and easy, which is important since I have a training appointment at the gym.

Wednesday
Subway Sandwiches - with all this fancy holiday food to overindulge in I think we are both ready for something more simple.  We've been avoiding sandwiches lately because of all the bread, but I think this is the perfect time to splurge on some subs.  I might try to swing Big Town Hero instead of Subway because I completely adore their bread.

Thursday
We will almost certainly be eating out and I'm hoping for McMenamins.  We'll see what I can work into the schedule.

Friday
Caesar Salad Wraps

Saturday
Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese - more soup for this delightfully chilly weather we've been having.  I'm going to see if I can pick up some Grand Central Ciabatta and make some extra special grilled cheese sandwiches.  We'll see what I can do!

Feel free to leave me a comment with your meal plan.  I hope yours is looking a little more put together than mine is this week.  How do you build your menu post-holiday decadence?  Do you go cold turkey on the junk food? (tee hee) Or do you favor a gradual transition back to the balanced life?  Did you manage to enjoy the holidays without going completely crazy on food?  If so, high-five - and maybe next year I'll join you!  (Notice I didn't even attempt to say that I would join you for Christmas - ha!)  It really wasn't all that bad.  I'm mostly just overly busy this week and I needed to get something simple in place so that we would at least have a plan.

Meals: 13-19 November

I completed this plan around Thursday of last week, but have been slow to post it.  I think it will be a good - I've already had two of the dinners and enjoyed them.  I intentionally simplified the plan a bit this week and I don't have any new recipes to try.  My parents will be here visiting all of next week and I want to be able to focus on getting ready for their visit!

Sunday
(leftover) Bean and Kielbasa soup (which was excellent - both times!!) - Tim's parents came over for lunch and I made garlic and rosemary chicken tenders with steamed carrots, steamed broccoli, and cottage cheese on the side.  Mom and Dad brought garlic bread to complete our nice, colorful, tasty lunch.  With such a fabulous lunch, I decided dinner could be simple.

Monday
Tilapia, (leftover) steamed broccoli and carrots, canned green beans, cottage cheese

Tuesday
Chicken Tricolore, salad

Wednesday
Tamales, chips, mango salsa - I'll be bringing these to our community group shared dinner.  I buy the prepped - not frozen - bag of tamales at Costco and I'll steam them up.  Their mango salsa is great, so I'll get that, and I'll look for some sort of whole grain tortilla chip.

Thursday
Low-Carb Zucchini Lasagna

Friday
Spinach Feta Salad, bell pepper slices

Saturday
Tomato Basil Soup, Grilled Cheese

food memories - nutritious associations

Food creates huge bonds and memories for me.  Tim and I go to hockey games frequently and when we started going we would often get nachos (nothing tastes quite like stadium nachos).  We've adjusted our budget and adjusted our diets and now the sight of that neon-orange glue that they call cheese makes me feel a little queasy.  My tummy is thankful that we don't often have stadium nachos.  But there is still a part of me that craves them between every first and second period of a hockey game.  It's a firm association - just a memory built around the sense of taste.

Watch - now that I'm blogging about it, I'll probably end up buying nachos this Friday.  Just great! :-p

But there are other food memories too.  Good food memories.  Right now I am getting ready to go and meet a friend's new baby.  It's making me think back the almost seven months to when my little one was born and I'm remember the sights and smells and sounds of the hospital experience.  I'm reliving the taste too, which is why for breakfast I'm having lime jello and beef broth.  Gross, right?  I had a c-section for Little Miss's delivery, and I ate a TON of jello while anxiously waiting for labor to start.  And the first food I was able to have as I was recovering post-surgery was beef broth.  I had also been on a low-sodium diet for most of my pregnancy, so I think that snap of salt and the warm liquid was exactly what I needed.  So now, anytime I am feeling nostalgic about Sophie's birth, I have some beef broth.

All of this to say - food memories can be good - they don't have to be indulgences.  I'm looking to build a family diet where we eat healthy, fresh, flavorful food around important events in our life, or repeated events, so that we come to crave those foods.  I've started making a chicken caesar wrap for dinner and bringing it with us to eat in the parking lot before a hockey game.  I want our birthday parties and holidays to have fresh fruits and veggies as part of the memory - and maybe just a few cookies or desserts.  I think that special food for special times makes sense, but if it's always junk food then that is what we will crave when we look to create those special feelings.  It's something that I want to continue to improve for us as much as possible.

tools: steamer

I grew up with a Rival steamer/rice cooker that my mom used for a couple of decades - pretty much three or four times a week.  We were eating a LOT of rice in those days.  We would have rice for dinner with soy sauce and then the leftover rice would be served at breakfast with milk and sugar.  We used it for veggies too - mostly carrots or asparagus.

I now have my own steamer and it is fan-cee - woo!  It's beautiful and it works so well and I love it.  It's a double-decker and has a wonderfully large capacity.  I grabbed this pic of my current Rival steamer from Amazon.

I have not tried meat in it, but I have cooked rice in one basket and a veggie in the other basket, or two different veggies.  Steaming always sounds to me like it will be a big pain, but once I get it going, it really isn't bad.  I like it that I can set something to steam for 30 minutes, then work on the rest of dinner, and everything has some hope of being done at the same time.  It's the perfect cooking method for me because I prefer almost all of my veggies to be crisp-tender and boiling or even pan cooking sometimes just doesn't let up and they are a soggy mess.  Tim has grown fonder of several veggies that I suspect he disliked mostly because of texture in the past.  And I agree - soggy asparagus is one of the most disgusting things ever.

My new use for the steamer is to cook food for baby Sophie.  I steamed apples and carrots the other day, with great success!  I am using a little munchkin hand-mill to grind up the softened food - but I need to switch to my big food processor (more on that later).

I'm also reading that steaming is a great way to retain nutrients (compared to boiling or microwaving).  We are pro-nutrients, so this is great news.  Leave me a comment if you are steaming something that I haven't thought of.  I kind of want to try potatoes.  We do green beans, asparagus, carrots, spinach, and apples now.  Have you tried any meat or fish?  Want to encourage me to be brave enough to give it a go?

simple meals

As much as I'm enjoying the hunt for new recipes - and I'm pleased with the success we've had at finding new meals that we like - I'm starting to miss the very simple three-part meals that we typically eat.  The classic is "meat, starch, veg" but we've adapted it recently to be "meat, veg, _____" with the third item being more veg, more meat, or some sort of protein booster like cottage cheese, or beans, or eggs.

This morning I'm going through my meal planner and creating single ingredient meals, like "green beans" or "cottage cheese" so that I can easily create a meal by dragging and dropping my three items.  I think next week I'll do chicken, steamed broccoli, and pinto beans - maybe add a little string cheese in there.  The advantage to adding it in the meal planner is that I can drag'n'drop onto my chosen day, but also, it auto-populates the ingredients into my shopping list.  For my pinto beans I will need beans, red pepper flakes, garlic salt, and onion.

Sometimes the simpler the meal, the more we savor the individual ingredients.  I know it makes prep easier and cheaper.  I also find simple meals easier to adapt to our schedule, since I can often pre-prep meals and then we're ready to go within a few minutes if I know Tim isn't sure when he'll wrap work up that evening, or if I have an errand to run right before dinner.

Slow-Cooker Chipotle Beef Tacos with Cabbage and Radish Slaw

Guest photographer: Tim

This meal was delicious!  I cooked it up on Monday.  The original recipe is from Real Simple.  I will definitely put it back in the queue for a month or two out.  I have never cooked with canned chipotle peppers like this before and I wasn't paying attention and I bought them whole instead of chopped as directed.  I mostly just used some of the sauce from the can and a little bit of one of the peppers - it had quite a bite to it, but I liked it.

I used bok choy for the slaw instead of cabbage (Tim isn't crazy about cabbage), and the flavor worked out well.  The original recipe is meat and slaw in tortillas, but I served the meat over a bed of slaw instead.  It was great.

Meals: 6-12 November

The schedule piled up on me and I didn't make the meal-planning a priority on Wednesday.  I am reminded of why I started planning ahead - things run more smoothly in my kitchen when I have a menu, shopping, and prep plans all set.  Here's the menu for the upcoming week.

Sunday

scramble - I have some breakfast sausage leftover from Wednesday's lasagna triumph

Monday

slow-cooker chipotle beef tacos with cabbage and radish slaw (new recipe!)

Tuesday

tilapia, green beans, apple slices

Wednesday

Community group is having baked potatoes!  I signed up to bring some of the potatoes, cheddar cheese and sour cream (I am going to watch and see and if no one signs up to bring bacon, I will bring that too.  Bacon is awesome!!)

Thursday

white-bean and kielbasa stew (new recipe!)

Friday

chicken caesar salad wraps

Saturday

Burgerville.  yum.

Questions?  Comments?  Let me know if you want any recipes.  Stay tuned for reviews as I cook my way through the week.

Updated: Caramelized Onions with Apples Tart

Guest Photographer:  Tim

As I predicted, the luau food was enough to keep us fed through our normal dinner time.  We were hungry around 8:00p though, so I made this apples and onions tart that I planned for Saturday night.

It's beautiful!  Perfect meal for a fall evening.

This was easy, tasty, and beautiful.  The only complaint I have is that it was begging for some cheese.  It just needed a bit more flavor.  Tim and I agreed that it could use some gouda mixed in with the sour cream, or maybe some gorgonzola cooked in with the apple and onion mixture.  Next time!

11.5.2011 - update - we made this again on Thursday and I added some gorgonzola.  It was delicious.  Absolutely perfect!!  It added just a little more flavor to the mix and it was great.

Chicken Tricolore

I tried a completely new recipe on Thursday night; I picked it up from this Plan to Eat blog post.  I hosted a PartyLite party that evening, so I made this since I knew I could assemble it earlier in the day and then we could eat it quickly before party guests arrived.  It was beautiful, easy, and delicious.  The big three.  I didn't do a careful price analysis, but it's pretty affordable.  The big four. !  I used chicken tenders since I had them on hand, and I'm really not big on bone-in chicken.  Tim had his with a few tomatoes and no green olives on his plate, but he still liked the flavor of the dish.  This recipe was an all-around win.  I am going to use Plan to Eat to put it in the queue to make it again in the next few weeks. (I love that feature.)

Spinach Alfredo Lasagna with 2 Types of Sausage

Community group chose lasagna for our dinner, so I took one of my favorites - Spinach Alfredo Lasagna.  I used Jimmy Dean sage breakfast sausage, blended with a mild pork Italian sausage.  It was perfect.  Tim took leftovers for lunch the next day and I think he's asked for it again once a day since Wednesday :)  Success.

Ginger-Apple Pork StirFry

This is one of my favorite stir fry recipes.  I got it from sparkpeople.com and I love the bell peppers with ginger.  I used a ginger paste from a tube instead of powdered ginger this time, and I thought it had a little more snap to it, which I loved.  The only thing I missed this time was the leeks that I usually use - the pop of green color is nice.  The yellow onion tasted good, but it wasn't as pretty as it usually is.  Food should be pretty whenever possible.

Cheddar Broccoli Soup, Beer Bread, Salami

Tonight's dinner was supposed to be scramble, but we had a beer bread mix calling my name and the weather was perfect for a creamy soup.  It's not in line with the low(er)-carb direction I'm taking our household meals, but it's not outside my comfort zone for an occasional special meal.  And it was certainly special.

The wind is cold, cold, cold on my nose.  But the soup warms me, down to my toes.

Kalua Pig

This weekend we had a mini-luau with some friends that we traveled to Hawaii with last year.  It's nice and rainy already here in Portland, but this time last year we were sitting on the beach, enjoying fresh fruit, beautiful seas and skies, and relaxing in the lovely weather.  We didn't make the trek back this year, but to commemorate the trip we had some Hawaiian cuisine favorites like mac salad, shoyu chicken, haupia pudding, and I made Kalua Pig for the first time.

Tim took some great photos for me of the prep and the cooking and then, in my haste to serve it up, I failed to get some shots of it all cooked!  But it looked like any other kalua pig you've ever seen and it tasted good too. Kalua Pig is not my favorite dish, but Tim was impressed and he's really my target audience.

It's really three ingredients - these two, plus a lot of pork.

The salt was a coarse grain and was surprisingly damp feeling.  The package said it contained carbon from coconut shells and it had a smoky scent to it.

The recipe calls for pork butt, but I found pork shoulder on sale at Whole Foods and the butcher said it would be perfect for this dish.  I haven't had a lot of conversations with butchers.  It was kind of fun.  He was very helpful and I appreciated his ability to talk through the recipe and process with me.

Salted, smoked, and ready to go.

Cooking away in the slow cooker.  We flipped it over once mid-cooking and by morning it was already fall-apart tender.  The salt worked in throughout the meat and the whole house smelled of hickory.

I wish we had a picture of it all cooked up, but you can probably imagine what it looked like.  It was dark, still moist, and very tender.  I should have taken more pictures at the rest of the luau too!  It was a success.

Tilapia, green beans, string cheese

Friday dinner was quick and tasty - the perfect meal to start a nice weekend at home.  My only complaint was that it's not cooking with as many colors as I prefer.  Cream looking salmon with basil pesto and green beans and a cream string cheese.  Where is the pop!!  Where is the pizazz?  It didn't lack for flavor though - and the hands-on time was minimal.  Win.

Brussels Sprouts and Chicken (Leftovers!)

Tim was out last night for dinner so I was left to my own devices and I didn't feel like cooking for one.  Leftovers to the rescue.  Brussels sprouts and some quick grilled chicken.

The sprouts looked a little slimier than the first go-round, but they actually held their texture better than I expected.  My complaint was more about the flavor.  Spicy!  The dried red pepper flakes had soaked into the glaze and were active and fiery.  Too much.  I think I might try rinsing them if I try to eat them as leftovers again.  I drank my quota of water for the evening after the spicy sprout escapade.

Dinner is... Onions!

Dinner wasn't just onions.  We went to our first community group dinner and they pick a theme and then people sign up for ingredients.  I brought onions - yellow, green, purple.  Pretty and tasty!!

It looks like green were the most popular - which is actually kind of what I expected.  They are nice and mild and sit beautifully on top of some chili and cheddar cheese.

I threw all of the leftover onions together in one big container so now I have pre-chopped onions for a few days.  Handy.  I use my glass containers for leftovers whenever they are pungent or I am likely to want to reheat directly in the container.

Meals: 29 October - 5 November

Meal plan!  I am growing to love this time to sit down and review what we ate recently and figure out what we want to have in the next few days.  Plan to Eat has a great queue feature, so if I add a recipe and I know that it's something I want to try soon I can queue it and then when I open that week to plan it out, the queue reminds me of what I've been wanting to make lately.

Saturday
We went to Hawai'i on vacation this time last year and I think we are all wishing we'd booked another trip.   Instead, we are going to have a little luau at our house and it will be a mid-afternoon meal, so for dinner we will either have leftovers or for those of us who already had enough of the kalua pig, I'm making Caramelized Onion Tarts with Apples (new recipe!)

Sunday
Scramble - nice and simple, which is often what we need during this last evening of family weekend time before we head back into our work week.  This meal will often get subbed for a pizza delivery or a special dinner out, so I'm purposely planning something flexible.

Monday
Apple and Pork Stir-Fry - this is one of my favorite fall meals.  We used to serve it over rice, but now I just use a LOT of bell pepper so that it fills the bowl.  I bought some fresh ginger in a tube (I've always used powdered before) and I'm curious to see if we can taste a difference.

Tuesday
Chicken Caesar Salad

Wednesday
community group - I'm not sure yet what is on the menu

Thursday
Low-Carb Zucchini Lasagna - This uses zucchini slices (lengthwise) instead of lasagna noodles.  We had it once before, and liked it, but I have a couple of tweaks in mind that I think will make it even better.

Friday
Chicken Tricolore (new recipe!)

Saturday
Spinach Feta Salad

I'm happy to answer any questions about the meals or the recipes.  This last week was great and we mostly stuck to the plan and I've enjoyed posting pictures of the dinners as I finish them.  The meals are still coming to mind easily, like I have genius inspiration, but I'm sure the idea wheel will slow down at any time.  Feel free to leave meal ideas in the comments.

Takeout - Chicken Marsala Ravioli

It's nice to have a break sometimes.  We had an expiring Groupon and a schedule shift that meant we were having dinner together instead of the quick chicken caesar salads I had planned.  It lined up well for us to call in some takeout that Tim picked up on his way home.

This wasn't the greatest food I've ever had, but it was alright.  I actually missed cooking because of the control that it gives me over the flavors and the freshness of a dish.  It has been a while since I've had veggies quite this limp.  It kind of tasted like it looks there... fairly brown and a bit lumpy.  But it was still dinner and I didn't really have to work for it, so it worked out - and I'm all for motivation to keep cooking and trying my own things.

Brussels Sprouts and a Burger

I strayed from the meal plan tonight.  Tim was working late and I didn't have the broccoli that was in the meal plan and I had Brussels sprouts that I needed to use by the end of the week - all factors that made it a good idea to change it up.

I have never cooked Brussels sprouts.  I have only eaten them once in my life, about six months ago, and I was surprised to find that I love them. Why does everyone fuss about them?  I did a bit of internet reading and it turns out that some people don't like the smell, and they are often overcooked which results in soggy gray lumps that smell slightly of sulfur.  That pretty much clears up why people fuss about them.

But, as I suspected, steamer to the rescue, they were delicious.  I steamed them lightly using my double decker steamer and flavored them using guidelines from Sam the Cooking Guy in "just a bunch of recipes."  I wish I could recommend this cooking book!  I just can't get fully behind his style.  He makes some good points and I thought the tone started out pretty funny, but by the 15th recipe or so, I just thought he was being rude.  So, read at your own discretion - I got his book from the library, tagged about 12 recipes to try, and I don't feel the need to own it.  Just in case you want to make Brussels sprouts as tasty as the ones pictured below, I've typed the recipe out at the end of the post.  It was a great dinner!  Tim brought his own dinner home since he knew he would be late, but I saved out a sprout for him to sample.  Sadly, this is one of probably three foods in the world that we don't actually agree on.  But Tim's a great sport, so I'm sure these will find their way to the table once in a while.

Brussels Sprouts You'll Actually Eat

Copied from: Sam the cooking guy: just a bunch of recipes.  (with just a couple of edits by me)

3/4 lb Brussels sprouts

1/2 T olive oil

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 T balsamic vinegar

1 T brown sugar

Trim the sprouts to remove any ugly outer leaves.  If the sprouts are large, like big walnuts, cut them in quarters lengthwise; if they're small, like a big grape, just cut them in half lengthwise.

Steam until the sprouts are just beginning to get tender, about 10 minutes.  

Preheat a nonstick pan well over medium-high heat and add the oil.  When it just begins to smoke, add the sprouts, garlic, and pepper flakes.  Stir and keep moving until they begin to brown, maybe 2 minutes.

Add the balsamic vinegar and brown sugar, stir for a minute, remove, and serve.

Chicken Sausage with Veggies

Dinner ended up being pretty late last night.  We went to family swim and that always makes us tired and hungry, so Sophie was ready to go straight to bed when we got home, which delayed dinner prep.  Tim and I stopped and grabbed a Muchas Gracias snack on the way home to tide us over before dinner.  I could seriously eat there every day. Tim even shared a little bit of his cheese quesadilla with me.  Ahh, true love <3.

Our chicken sausage with veggies ended up being worth the wait.  I don't always balance sausage warming with veggie cooking very well, but this time everything went together in a great blend.  It tasted wonderful.

I've started buying mini bell peppers from Costco - they are easy to prepare and they portion out well for a whole pepper per person in omelets.  For this veggie dinner I used mini peppers for the two of us.  This photo isn't doing the color of the pepper justice.  They are beautiful!

The finished dinner.  It was delicious.  Tim suggested adding spinach, which ended up adding a great bass flavor to the kick of the sausages, peppers, and onions.

Pizza Quesadillas ... and a little twist

Dinner tonight was pizza quesadillas.  They are easy to make, Tim loves them, and with our low(er) carb tortillas they work out alright.  I use squeezy pizza sauce from Contadina, a little mozzarella cheese, some turkey pepperoni and - tada! - dinner.  My waffle iron has plates that flip over for a smooth side option, so I use those to grill my quesadillas.

I'm not always in the mood for the traditional pizza ingredients, so sometimes I change it up.  Tonight I went with peanut sauce, a little cheese, and some bell pepper.  I loved it.

A little overdone on the peppers, so it didn't cook flat, but it was still tasty.

The bell peppers get just a little softened and they taste great with the peanut sauce.  I used my pizza cutter to slice the quesadilla into manageable triangles.  Works great.

Taco Salad

Tonight's dinner was taco salad.

Normally, I would pile it all on in layers, but I spread it out a bit so that you could see the different elements.  The base is romaine lettuce, topped with taco meat, a few pinto beans, cheddar cheese, green onions, some tomatoes, a dollop of sour cream, a scatter of olives, and a couple of scoops out of an avocado.  It was delicious!

tools: Plan to Eat

As I struggled with this wave of cooking ennui, I started to look to friends and blogs for ideas and thoughts on recipes, meal-planning structure, shopping frequency... all of it.  I found some great resources, but my favorite one came from I'm an Organizing Junkie in the form of a meal planning tool.

Plan to Eat has jazzed up the whole routine and I am loving it!  I started with the free 30-day trial, and by day 4 I was convinced that this would make the difference.  It's been wonderful.

The recipe importing is ideally straightforward and easy to use.  When I have a recipe on paper I type it in and then it's available for planning at any time.  If it's an online recipe I can use their bookmarklet to import it directly into my recipe stash at Plan to Eat.  This is making my recipe and meal-planning blog-surfing so much more productive and worth my time.  I am not printing off recipes to try to use later - just click import, change anything that I know I don't want in my version of the recipe - and it's done.  Simple.

I love the drag-and-drop planning structure.  Recipes are displayed on the left-hand side (and you can search through them, or filter them as you find helpful) and then when you've selected a recipe for dinner on Thursday night, drag it over to Thursday night.  Love it.

Then the customized date range on the shopping list searches your planned recipes and culls out a shopping list, sorting items by departments (which you can label in a way that makes sense to you) and then also sorts them by store.  So handy.

The ability to friend people within the site means that you can easily swap recipes with friends with accounts, or you can look for people on message boards who are trying to follow a similar diet track.  This has been so helpful for me as I try to get better at finding lower-carb options for our family.  I was browsing through the friend posts and saw Weight Watchers, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Organic-focus... lots of options.

I recommend taking the tour and seeing what you think of Plan to Eat.  Let me know if you sign up and want to be friends so that we can swap recipes.  It's a beautiful site and the simple, cornflower blue (classic kitchen color) design makes me feel organized and ready to plan.  Check it out!  I bet you'll love it.

Update: Tim is right - he mentioned in the comments that I left out a key feature in my review.  The meal plan can be published as an iCal feed and imported into a Google calendar, Outlook, etc.  We use Google calendar as a family and it has been great to have our menu for the evening available at a glance.  It's a handy feature.

a starting point

I've always managed our household menu planning and grocery shopping.  There were plenty of years when we were both working and one or the other of us was in grad school and "menu planning" literally was picking a restaurant and then trying to bribe, beg, or otherwise persuade the other spouse to be the one to call in and pick up the order.  I don't miss those years.  I was surprised though, at how difficult it was for me to get any kind of good planning, shopping, prep, cleanup rhythm going.  I quickly got frustrated with how much food I would buy and then end up wasting because I didn't have a plan.  I got tired of trying to think of something new and exciting to have (I went through a whole month where all I could ever think of was soup - just the word "soup.")  Overall, the whole task just seems really boring and I didn't want to put work into it.

Just when I started to feel like I could set a budget, and make waffles, potatoes and meat, rice and stir-fry for dinner every night and at least we would get by, we made some changes in habits as a family and we decided to cut back on carbs.  We have a carb-filled - no, a carb-stuffed, diet in this country - and Tim and I started to see signs that we should rethink that track.  We are now looking for less overall carbs, and trying to pull in the complex, veggie and bean based, helpful building blocks kind of carbs, instead of the cheetos and white bread carbs, which were not helping our bodies towards their ideal performance capability.

It's been tough.  Very tough.  I have never looked into nutrition in depth before, and I still don't really have the patience to make a science out of it.  I'm at the stage now where I'm cutting out the obvious factors.  When I make stir-fry now, I rarely serve it over rice.  The bowl holds it just fine and we don't miss that filler.  Instead of having a chicken sausage on a stadium bun, we are just eating the grilled sausage with a fork and knife.  I'm surprised at how much I miss conventional munching formats (sandwiches are brilliant!!  It's been hard to give them up) but I'm also amazed at how much more flavor I get when things aren't drowning in bread.  Hamburger patty with feta and pickles and maybe some mustard has way more taste going on without the onion roll and I am enjoying the chance to explore those flavors.

We are by no means perfect at this - or even committed to letting it run our lives.  At this point we are looking at our options and putting ourselves through some change to see how it feels.  As I write this, just a tiny portion of a ginormous Costco pumpkin pie is sitting in our fridge.  We've munched the rest of it.  Not perfect; not claiming to be perfect.  But working on it.

Food planning has helped.  I have a lot more energy and attention now to the foods around me.  I'm learning about heartier veggies (kale instead of corn) that help us to feel more full and satisfied and less likely to just keep munching.  This blog will help as I get the chance to think through things on paper (which is definitely how I learn best) and get some feedback from other people who are noticing the same things, or already have great recipes to share, or want to talk through ideas together.  I'm also looking forward to being able to look back at meals over the course of a year and see where we've changed, where we've stayed the same.  I think evidence of personal growth is one of the best motivators for a big project like this.

Oh, one more thing about the planning.  Baby Sophie is 6 months old and I am excited about the opportunity we have to raise her with a different level of food awareness than I had growing up.  I've had some food struggles (yep: addictions) that I would love to see her avoid if possible.  She'll find her own path (don't they always?) but I will do my best to set her on a good course.  Which may just include the occasional pumpkin pie.

Happy meal planning.

Meals: 21-28 October

Normally I like to plan my menu on Wednesday and then do grocery shopping on Thursday. This week is a little off though, so I'm playing catch-up and planning today. I have some meals on hand that I think will get us through and hopefully I can just do a little grocery shopping to fill in where needed.

Friday
taco salads - I am taking lettuce and taco toppings up to a friend who just had a baby.  I'll make double the ingredients and when Sophie and I get home from our errand of love we will have the same meal we just delivered.

Saturday
pizza quesadillas

Sunday
chicken sausage with bell peppers and onions (in a bowl - no bun), cheese cubes on the side

Monday
turkey bacon, steamed broccoli, cottage cheese

Tuesday
chicken caesar salad - I have been cooking up chicken tenders with lemon juice and rosemary for our salads. It just adds a nice little zip.

Wednesday
chili night with our new community group through church (we are trying it out for the first time - excited/whoa - new thing)

Thursday
basil pesto tilapia (from Costco), steamed edamame, string cheese

Friday
peanut chicken with sprouts - I put together this collection of Thai-ish veggies with chicken and it's one of my favorites.  It's usually chicken, carrots, cabbage, bean sprouts, purple onion, and then a peanut sauce.  I like the one from Trader Joe's - better than I liked the one from Pampered Chef.  I found a couple of recipes, so I'll try making my own soon.

Feel free to ask any questions about the meals.  Most of them are really as simple as they look - like Monday is really turkey bacon in the oven, broccoli in the steamer and 1/4 C cottage cheese.  Simple, but filling and tasty.  I'd love to see your meal plan for the week in the comments.