What's For Dinner? January Week 4 - February Week 1

I got an e-mail from our CSA farmers last week with an update on their current seed planting efforts for the 2012 growing season! And they even sent a few pictures. It's ridiculous how giddy this makes me. I cannot wait for June!

1500 tomato plants are up and growing! (That's John pictured below.)

Herbs

Last week I cooked another butternut squash to puree for Sophie. Don't think I ever showed you the picture of my winter squash stock pile from late fall. I'll have to post that next time. But it was ridiculous. A compilation of our CSA, a local pumpkin farm and Craig's aunt and uncle's garden. We still have several to go. But Sophie sure does love her squash and so I like to keep some on hand (cooked, pureed and frozen in cubes) for an easy go-to veggie for this little lady.

Both kids are also huge fans of button-pushing for kitchen appliances. :)

Also last week, Will and I made some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and I made some more of our favorite fudge sauce to drizzle on homemade ice cream for desserts. I ended up putting most of our cookies in the freezer after my mom made my favorite molasses cookie recipe for me and my boss gave me a pan of cookie bars. LOTS of sweets last week!

{Week of January 21-27}

It's been awhile since we've had meatloaf and it just sounded good. So this meal included my favorite mini meat loaves recipe from Cooking Light (the one I always used to freeze in portions for the kids), Weelicious twice baked potatoes, some frozen (from fresh) sweet corn that Craig's aunt and uncle shaved right off the ears and then froze in a quart Ziploc for us, and half a Hawaiian sweet roll (leftover from our bread pudding a couple weeks ago). A VERY starchy meal! But comfort food it is!

(Plus some applesauce for the kids.)

I love me some Weelicious Chinese chicken salad!!! And I love to serve it in lettuce wraps. This is what I made for my own birthday dinner... except I made it the night before so it was ready when I was.

And finally, I made a couple of our favorite homemade pizzas - Hawaiian & BLT - on homemade crust.

{Week of January 28th - February 3rd}

Sophia supervising in carrot walnut pancakes for breakfast on Saturday morning. (I always at least double the walnuts in the Weelicious recipe.)

One of our faves!

Craig's not a pancake-man. He eats cereal almost every day. Unless I make eggs.

Clifford only briefly sat with Will for this picture. Much to sticky/messy of a meal. Yogurt, syrup, banana...

For dinner on Saturday night: black bean tomato soup with cilantro lime cream. Mmm.

On Sunday, I put bbq beef in the crock pot to cook all afternoon 'cause weekends are my favorite time to use the crock pot. Unfortunately, I felt rotten by the time dinner rolled around and didn't even join my family at the table. Craig was in charge while I lay curled up in a ball on the couch and I was so appreciative of his taking the reigns for a night.

Craig is a no-nonsense kind of dad. He doesn't mess with clips and pony tails when he puts Sophie at the table. When he's on duty, she wears all sorts of random head gear to keep hair out of her face. Take this t-shirt sleeve for example...

Serves it's purpose I guess! Craig was also responsible for the dessert the kids ate this night: what he fondly refers to as a "kiss sandwich"... graham crackers microwaved with caramel kisses between. I think there might have been marshmallows involved too? He won big props for that from our littles.

Just a random, cute, dinner-time pic where Will wanted to compare hand sizes with daddy. {Smile.}

I think it was for Tuesday's dinner that I made sweet and sour pork stir fry. One of my favorite stir fry recipes - so tangy and flavorful with crushed pineapple and spicy red pepper flake in it!

1/4 cup pineapple juice

1 Tbsp cornstarch

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1/4 tsp crushed red pepper

1/2 # pork loin

1/4 tsp garlic powder

oil for stir frying

1/4 cup sliced onion

1 cup sliced red bell pepper

1/2 cup sliced green bell pepper

1/2 cup sliced zucchini

1 cup coarsely chopped fresh pineapple

2 cups hot cooked rice

-Combine first seven ingredients. Cut pork into 1" pieces and sprinkle with garlic. Heat oil in wok and cook until done. Remove and keep warm. Cook onion 1 minute. Add bell peppers and zucchini 3 minutes more. Add meat and sauce mixture and cook until thickened. Stir in pineapple. Serve over rice.

*I double the meat and veggies but leave the sauce the same and it still seems plenty saucy and serves at least 4 instead of 2. I also just buy an 8oz can of crushed pineapple, strain the juice for the sauce and then stir pineapple in at the end. I love the tangy flavor of the pineapple but I'm not crazy about chunks of pineapple in hot main dishes, so crushed is my solution. And finally, I change up my bell peppers based on what I have or what is on sale. This is an old picture (above) and I used all green pepper. But you can use a variation of whatever colors you like.

Final meal this week: chicken tortilla soup with chipotle and fire-roasted tomato. Still one of my all time favorite soups. There are crushed tortilla chips (I use the lime kind) and grated, smoky white cheddar on the bottom... and cooked bacon, raw red onion, cilantro and lime juice on top. Delish!!!

Oh! I did make some Weelicious vanilla cupcakes this week for a Groundhog Day thing (which I'll post later) and those turned out really good. Those would be an easy and reasonably healthy birthday party cupcake to serve.