Menu Plan -- the good and the ugly.

Sometimes weeks can go by and everything on the menu turns out fabulously. No disasters, no gagging, no half-eaten plates of food. Yet at other times I seem to hit a string of recipes that just aren’t so wonderful and are much harder to swallow. Like lately.

My “Cream of Green” soup, although eatable, was a color that made swallowing rather difficult, and in the words of hubby, “it needs more chicken.” But the “Chocolate Avocado pudding” just wasn’t redeemable. The combination of avocado, cocoa powder, and almond butter simply couldn’t be disguised even with honey & vanilla mixed in and mashed strawberries on top.

Ok, so I can’t be a kitchen-genius all the time.

As requested last week, here is the recipe for Sesame Chicken & Asparagus.  I have to tell ya, it was definitely one of my golden moments.  This was sooooo good!  I never stick to a recipe, so here if my revised version, best I can recall.  I hardly ever measure and I usually just add ingredients as they strike my fancy, but this is as close as I can get to having it all down on paper.  Hope you like it as much as we did! 
 
Package of Rice noodles, cooked as directed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs rice wine vinegar
1 Tbs brown sugar
6 Tbs chunky peanut butter
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup sesame oil
1 ½ c. cooked chicken, diced or shredded
5 Tbs sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 lb thin asparagus, chopped
1 small cucumber, halved, seeded, and cut into 1/4 inch dice
Olive oil

Wash & chop asparagus, set aside
Toast sesame seeds, set aside.
Cut cucumber as directed in ingredients. Set aside.

Prepare sauce: Place the garlic, vinegar, brown sugar, peanut butter, sesame oil, and soy sauce in a food processor. Process until well blended.

Sauté asparagus in olive oil until tender (I like mine to be a bit crunchy). Combine cooked rice noodles, sauce, asparagus, and sesame seeds.
Mix until well coated and serve immediately, topped with cold cucumbers.

Now onto my menu plan for the week! 

Sunday: Cheddar Bacon waffles, sausage

Monday: Cheeseburger Pie, sugar snap peas

Tuesday: Chicken Panini

Wednesday: Almond Chicken Salad

Thursday: Leftovers

Friday: Baked Pasta, Chicken & Spinach Casserole

Saturday: Classic Italian Lasagna, garlic bread

 
Eat hardy, folks!

I have been very delinquent with my menu planning lately.  Bad me.  Back in the swing of things this week, so here it is!

Sunday – Mac & Cheese, salad, fruit
Monday – Sesame Chicken & Asparagus pasta
Tuesday – Cream of Green soup w/ homemade Beer bread
Wednesday – out with a friend
Thursday – Bacon-wrapped BBQ Chicken (crockpot), mashed potatoes
Friday – BBQ Ranch Chicken rollups, fruit salad
Saturday – leftovers

Extras: granola, bread, something yummy for Saturday breakfast! :)

Menu Plan Monday!

My hubby and I feel so much better eating home cooking rather than eating out. It’s really amazing. The more we eat healthy stuff, the less other stuff sounds good (with the exception of brownies, of course, which always sound good!). This past week I experimented with adding vegetables to my normal dishes, hoping to gain the vitamins and disguise the flavor – it worked! I snuck pureed squash into Oatmeal muffins, Macaroni & Cheese, Quesadillas, and Corn Chowder. You couldn’t even tell a difference, except that I think the food was actually more filling, but it didn’t alter the taste at all. My excitement to cook continued to be fueled when I stepped on the scale and had lost 1.5 lbs this week! Ok, so it’s not a lot, but every ounce helps! Does anybody else have any good way to disguise veggies in their food?

• Sunday: Potato Corn Chowder, **pumpkin bread
• Monday: Leftovers
• Tuesday: Creamed Crockpot Chicken, brown rice, sautéed green beans
• Wednesday: Tortilla soup
• Thursday: Veggie Lasagna, homemade applesauce
• Friday: Taco salad
• Saturday: Bacon Cheddar waffles

** The Pumpkin bread recipe was compliments of Heather at Mrs. Southern Bride This week also included a batch of Cheerio breakfast bars to cut up and take with us to work this week, an assortment of smoothies for hubby’s hour drive to work at 5:00 AM, and who knows what else will strike my fancy between now and Saturday! Happy cooking y’all!

Menu Plan Monday! ...errr Tuesday :)

• Monday: Baked Asian Chicken, Brown Rice & Zucchini casserole, homemade applesauce
• Tuesday: Taco Salad
• Wednesday: Chicken Parmesan, sautéed Asparagus
• Thursday: Veggie Lasagna (if I’m feeing ambitious)
• Friday: My hubby usually surprises me with bringing home pizza or some other such yumminess because he knows how much I don’t feel like cooking by the time I get home from work on Friday night!
• Saturday & Sunday: To be determined

My dearly-beloved & I are trying hard to eat healthier and be more aware of what goes into our mouths (…and stomachs). Portion control, better ingredients, lots of fruits & veggies, plenty of water, and exercise (when we can squeeze it in) all play a roll. But let me tell ya, it’s a lot of work! Making stuff from scratch instead of just pulling out Cream-of-Mushroom soup to dump over some chicken, or a container of Cool Whip for a dessert takes time, planning, and energy. But it’s SO worth it because we end up feeling better, have more energy, plus the satisfaction of knowing what actually went into our system was good for us. In addition to the above menu, I’ve been experimenting with healthy energy smoothies, easy-but-healthy breakfast foods (muffins, bars) to grab while we’re running out the door for work in the morning, and trying to make sure there are healthy alternatives to chocolate & chips in the house! So far so good. This has whole endeavor has been a work-in-progress for me over the past year but every once in awhile I get reenergized with inspiration and I set to work on it full-force again. What really surprises me is how good you can make healthy stuff taste! The Rice & Bean casserole I made last night was delicious and completely healthy! It had carrots, zucchini, beans, rice, and seasonings, and although it looked healthy, it was amazingly good! “Healthy” food has been stereotyped as being boring and either flavorless or icky. This doesn’t have to be the case! Don’t get me wrong, I love Ranch dressing, sour cream, cream cheese, brownies, ice cream and Doritos as much as the next person (maybe more so…LOL), but there are things that are more important and that I love more than those things. Like taking care of my husband, giving him the best start to his day that I can, and helping us both look better, feel better, and trying to care for what God has entrusted to us – each other. That does not mean that I never eat those foods I enjoy – quite the opposite actually. Did you see the Friday menu…that it often includes pizza? Yeah, I adore pizza, but I try to only have two slices. I might enjoy a brownie or cookie out, but I rarely make them myself so there isn’t a whole pan sitting around. Portion control is a big part and learning not to be controlled by the food. I am a work-in-progress, ever pressing forward on this road of life, striving each day to do it a little better, make improvements in the areas I fail, and trusting God for the strength in all things, for I can do nothing on my own. What do you do to avoid the temptation of “favorite” foods that you know you’ll end up eating more of than you should?

Menu Plan Monday!

I plan out our week of meals almost every Monday, so here I am now following the blog-crowd and doing a Menu Plan Monday post! :) Menu planning helps save money when you grocery shop (because you only buy exactly what you need!) and it helps cut down on the weekly stress because you know what you're going to make for dinner before 5:00 rolls around!

• Monday - Pizza casserole
• Tuesday - Chicken w/ Wild Rise, sauteed Asparagus
• Wednesday - BBQ Pork sandwiches, Black Bean dip w/ chips
• Thursday - Tortilla soup, homemade sweet potato chips
• Friday - Leftovers!
• Saturday - Mexican Mac & Cheese, fresh Green Beans
• Sunday - haven't gotten that far yet!

Does anybody else do weekly menu-planning?