What's For Dinner? Week 2

Between meal prep and doing ALL the laundry, I was up ridiculously late on Friday night. Especially given the long day we had ahead of us on Saturday, that was NOT a good idea. But then at least I had Sunday free to relax. My problem is that I never sit down until everything is done. I never choose chilling out with a book or TV when there's work to be done... and there's always work to be done. Needless to say, I haven't read a book for my own pleasure in ages. Ahh, but one day I'll have too much time on my hands for reading, my children will be grown and I will wish they were little again. :) In the meantime, raising a healthy family is my main priority. And thank God for the cleaning lady that we just hired to come once a month!

On Thursday evening after grocery shopping, I got a bunch of things started to make Friday evening smoother and take care of some staple things for the kids. I like to keep 2 oz mini meatloaves frozen for Will when we need a meal in a pinch because he loves them and they defrost super quick. I also made some turkey apple loaf with ground carrot for Sophie and portioned it out into an ice cube tray for easy thawing as needed. And finally, I cooked some sweet potatoes for Sophie and portioned those out into ice cube trays, steamed some extra carrots for will and some zucchini and summer squash for Soph. Because I needed to prep the carrots for Sophie's turkey loaf, I just went ahead and chopped all the carrots, celery, onion and garlic that I'd need for our other meals.

On the menu this week:
1) Shredded BBQ beef sandwiches, sour cream cucumber salad and corn on the cob. This was our dinner on Mother's Day because I like to use my crock pot on Sundays and it was a super quick meal to put together. Will helped me as you'll see in pictures further down.
2) Chicken Noodle Soup (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/chicken-noodle-soup-recipe/index.html) and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. I've shared this recipe before because I make it a lot. I get the soup all together except the noodles and then just add the noodles the night we eat it.
3) Beef and Bean Chimichangas served with toppings of choice and probably a salad. This is another recipe I make a lot so I've probably shared it before. It's a nice "completely ready" meal for Wenesday or Thursday night. I'm not a whiz at the differences between Mexican dishes, but the filling is all inside of these and I bake them (the recipe gives directions for both frying and baking) and then serve them with toppings like cheese, lettuce, salsa. I usually refer to these as burritos though. Not sure if that's wrong?

I don't usually prep two meals at once but I had all the veggies prepped so I just multi-tasked:
Ahh! I need more counter space! I don't mind my little kitchen, but sometimes I have to get creative... or just deal with being overcrowded while I'm doing mass cooking.
Assembling the burritos: (sorry it's dark)

Five for the freezer and five for dinner this week. I freeze the ones on the cookie sheet and then pop them in a gallon freezer bag.

So the next day, all my freezer items were ready to be stuck in freezer bags for easy access. Left to right: burritos, Sophie's turkey loaf cubes in 1 oz portions, sweet potato cubes in 1 oz portions, Will's 2 oz mini meatloaves (which I just prep like normal meatloaf and then form into "mini loaves" on a cookie sheet, bake, cool and then freeze right on the cookie sheet before putting them into the bag... vs. Sophie's which is baked in a loaf pan, cooled and scooped out with a 1 oz scoop into an ice cube tray). Squash and sweet potato are pretty much the only thing I continue to keep on hand as a puree because I use them as a binder or add-in with her lentils and rice (etc) or mixed into her cottage cheese (etc).

Here's a tool I'd like to highlight this week: the pastry blender. I am using this thing almost daily now to mash up avocado (sometimes with banana).

Feeding Sophie has gotten to be a bit more challenging with her new behavior of refusing foods, exerting independence and dropping things over the side of the highchair. Some of the routine staples in her diet that I can usually always depend on are:

1) cottage cheese (usually mixed with sweet potato or squash)

2) avocado (usually mixed with banana or applesauce or yogurt)

3) cheese

4) grapes or blueberries are about the only fruits off the top of my head (besides avocado, banana and applesauce) that she will readily eat. The girl refuses strawberries, melons, pears, etc. - seriously, where did this child come from?? - unless I get creative and stir them into her cereal or yogurt in a ground form :)

5) zucchini and summer squash, sometimes peas and carrots

6) crackers, toast, cereal, PANCAKES!, grilled cheese, etc.

...and now meats, eggs and even plain, canned beans are hit or miss! Good grief!

So I keep pressing on: offering, exposing, incorporating healthy "add-ins" to her current favorites, i.e. wheat germ into her cottage cheese, yogurt or cereal. She doesn't notice and it's extra protein and iron that she may otherwise be missing out on.

Since the kids both love pancakes so much, I like to do pancakes on weekend mornings. Weelicious has several recipes I'd like to try. Those carrot pancakes were a hit. But this time I did whole wheat & oat pancakes (http://weelicious.com/2010/02/17/whole-wheat-oat-pancakes/). I mix up the batter on Friday night, stick it in the fridge and get my griddler out on the counter so that breakfast is made much quicker in the morning when the kids are hungry. Catherine (McCord - the Weelicious lady) uses agave nectar in place of sugar in many of her recipes. It's a natural sweetener made from the juice of the agave cactus. It is sweeter than refined sugar and less disturbing to the glycemic index because it does not stimulate digestive insulin seretion (a.k.a. a "sugar rush") like other sugars. This is what the bottle looks like that I got from Meijer's:

And here are our pancakes on Saturday morning. I was expecting a heartier texture with the oatmeal in them, but I wonder if it was because the batter sat overnight and made the oatmeal almost soggy? Anyway, I always put peanut butter on my plain pancakes, Will just gets a drizzle of syrup and Sophie eats them plain.

On Sunday, as I mentioned, Will helped out in the kitchen while I prepared our dinner. Here he's whisking together the homemade BBQ sauce, which he'd just dumped most of the ingredients in for.

Cleaning the cucumbers with a veggie scrubber. Grr... it ircks me how the cucumbers and Roma tomatoes always have this film on them in the store! I NEED to learn how to garden!

He really wanted to help peel the cucumbers, but then finally turned the job over to me after it took him forever to get one strip off. :)

Will learned how to use a pepper mill!

And then we went outside to peel the corn and throw the husks into the field. This was his favorite part - he was really looking forward to it.

Enjoying the final product! :)

The beef and soup make a lot of leftovers, which I did not freeze, so they will be easy to pack for hot lunches this week.

Oh, and one last side note: the strawberries that were such a good price at Meijer last week were SO flavorful! The best so far this year, for sure. So if they're still there this week, you may want to snag some. Happy eating! :)