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.