What's For Dinner? April Week 1

Eep! It's Wednesday night and still no dinner post! I almost didn't write one this week because I bought exactly one ingredient for this weeks meals (fresh sage) and I didn't do any meal prep. (I really didn't have the time last week/weekend.) But I have a couple recipes to share so here I am. This will be brief.

On the menu this week:
1) Sunday was Easter and a total gorging of delicious food made by other people!
2) Monday we had a few leftovers to eat up from previous days. I am a stickler for keeping an organized fridge. No leftovers left behind! Most everything has its place and if I open the fridge and can't see some free shelf space, I get all frazzled. Disorderly refridgerators are my pet peeve! LOL
3) Tuesday we pulled some cheeseburger soup from the deep freeze and served that along with some garlic bread, grapes and a steamed veggie.
4) Wednesday (tonight) was the day my one planned ingredient came into play. I had a package of frozen pumpkin ravioli (Meijer brand) and made a super simple (and delicious) brown butter sauce with chopped walnuts, sage, dried cranberries and freshly grated parmesan cheese. You can find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/butternut-squash-tortellini-with-brown-butter-sauce-recipe/index.html Giada shows you how to create tortellini using wonton wrappers. I've never tried that, but it sounds good! You can also just skip to the sauce part, which is what I did. Oh, and I didn't use that much butter. Craig literally had a tantrum the last time I prepared this, so for him and Will I cooked some frozen cheese tortellini with a regular marinara sauce. Everything came together very quickly. I also cut up and steamed some fresh broccoli plus a few extra veggies for the kids. Sophie's been eating with us on several occasions as well! Tonight she had some cooked and chopped raviolis without the sauce, chopped broccoli, peas, and diced tomatoes. It doesn't really go together but she didn't mind. She also had the tomato soup and grilled cheese recently. Our baby is growing up!

Someone once asked me if Will actually eats as much food as I put on his plate. As with most children his age, it's hit or miss. Depends on the day, his appetite, his mood, etc. But generally, he'll eat all the fruit or veggies put out, as well as any dairy product and just pick at the main dish. Lunches are pretty well accepted because they're pretty plain unless it's a leftover. Here is an example from tonights dinner. The before picture: And the after picture:

I'm packing the remaining raviolis for lunch on Thursday and Friday and saving Craig the ghastly heartache of seeing them on the table again.

5) Thursday is grocery shopping night so I'm pulling a second meal from the freezer: beef and bean "chimichangas". I'm not all that familiar with the difference between a burrito vs and enchilada vs a chimichanga... but this has a beef and bean filling, is baked (or could be fried but I choose not to), and we top it with stuff like cheese, salsa, lettuce, etc. So this will be a pop-in-the-oven and ready-to-go kind of meal and hopefully Sophie will like to try this too!

6) Friday and Saturday we have dinner plans with friends (I know! Check out our happening social calendar, huh?) so the kids will eat easy stuff that I can pull together like grilled cheese, English muffin pizzas, mini meatloaves that I keep frozen for when we're in a pinch.

7) I tried a new baking recipe this week and it is oh-SO-good!!! Homemade oreos! A co-worker shared an awesome new blog with me called Smitten Kitchen. I'm still in the early stages of stalking, but it looks both fabulous and right up my alley. My co-worker brought these to a work potluck last week and I decided I had to try them for my oreo-loving hubby and as part of a meal I plan to send over to the new Munoz family. Mine appear to be double stuffed - LOL. All the better!

Here's the recipe:

Makes 25 to 30 sandwich cookies
For the chocolate wafers:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter

1 large egg
For the filling:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter

1/4 cup vegetable shortening

2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

I used just 1 cup of sugar to make them taste more like the original. And also I don't have a pastry bag so I attempted to use a quart-size, plastic bag and that just didn't work. The filling was too thick. So I just spread with a small knife. Mmm! They are soooo good!

Okay, that's it! Not sure how easily my meal prep will work for next week either since my Friday and Saturday nights are spoken for, but I'll see what I can do...

Have a good rest of the week!