What's For Dinner? Week 3

Tomatoes and cucumbers and carrots, oh my!

So much for needing my own garden! (I'm still gonna' do it.) I've had so many vegetables given to me recently and I'm scrambling to do something with all of them before they go bad. Aunt Lori and Uncle Dan gave me a brown, paper, grocery sack filled with green beans, tomatoes (large and cherry-size), green peppers and carrots. Plus Craig's mom passed on a huge bag of plum-size tomatoes, Craig's aunt gave us a large bag of cucumbers and jalapeno peppers, and a lady from work gave me two giant zucchini. So I've made carrot pancakes, fresh tomato salsa, cucumber salad and four loaves of zucchini bread so far.

On the menu this week:
1. Saturday: Spicy rice, bean and cheese skillet from Kraftfoods.com. It's really not all that spicy and their picture looks way better than mine because we'd already dug into it and the topping looks a little disheveled. I've made this lots of times before - it's easy and tasty. And hooray for complete proteins! Rice and beans - remember my little nutrition lesson awhile back? Well, pair those with some vitamin C filled tomatoes and green peppers and you've got yourself a meal filled with iron, fiber and protein! I served this with some fresh fruit and (gasp!) tortilla chips for scooping. Yum.
2. Sunday: carrot pancakes for breakfast. Dinner at my in laws home... burgers and dogs on the grill, sweet corn, a couple of mayo-type salads (cucumber and potato), and my fresh salsa:
3. Monday: chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese, watermelon, sliced green bell pepper. I love this soup recipe. It's easy, flavorful and I love to make large portions and freeze it.

4. Tuesday: layered enchilada bake, topped with shredded lettuce and diced tomato, served with sliced nectarines on the side. Another favorite that I've made many times. This recipe was actually in a Kraft foods magazine under the topic of pre-assembling and freezing recipes. It's prepared similar to lasagna and it goes over very well at my house. Couple of tips: do NOT put foil in the bottom of the pan like the recipe suggests. It comes out of the pan just fine without it and the foil ended up being a huge mess the first time I made this. Also, I omit the Italian dressing it calls for (even though we have some in the fridge) and I can't imagine it really enhancing the overall flavor. Have I mentioned my theory on Kraft Foods (magazine & website) adding "1/4 cup" of various dressings to most all their dinner recipes? It's just enough to make you think you need it, but little enough that it won't affect the overall flavor, and you end up buying a $3 bottle of dressing just because the recipe calls for it. Ha! I'm onto you, Kraft people! And I'm not doing it! Here's a pic after assembling and before baking - the cheese was melting just from the heat of the cooked meat mixture.

5. Wednesday: leftovers from Monday night.

6. Thursday: leftovers from Tuesday night.

7. Friday: that's my race day and it will probably be a scrounging night for Craig and the kids. There's always easy stuff in my fridge to throw together in times like this. No biggie.

Hey! Pretty proud of myself for knocking my dinner post out by Tuesday night this week!