Back on the Band Wagon!

It's a new year...time to get back on track! Any good New Year's Resolutions? Mine is consistency...I want to stay more on track with cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. So far, so good...of course, we haven't even made it a week yet...hopefully I won't burn out too quickly. My husband asked me where Tansy was the other night. I told him she stayed behind in 2011!

OK, so along with my resolutions, the hubsters wants to lose 25 lbs by the time his grandpa comes to visit in a couple months. So, back to no/low-carb meals. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I just did a search for "low-carb" and there were a ton of yummy-looking ideas to try out. I tried looking up low-carb recipes on AllRecipes, and their search engine for that category was seriously lacking...most of what you get is condiments.

As usual, I get to splurge on Mondays since it is just me and the kids, so we typically have an Italian something with noodles. Also, since Saturdays are usually a bit hectic, and we usually have a ton of leftovers in the fridge, I'm designating Saturdays as leftover day. If we don't have enough leftovers, we can order pizza or go out to eat. Or, if we don't get to something planned during the week, I can make it on Saturday instead.

Here is this week's menu:

Sunday

Black eyed pea gumbo Buttermilk cornbread salad

Monday

Pesto chicken Florentine with sun dried tomatoes salad

Tuesday

Tacos

Wednesday

Greek chicken salad Dressing

Thursday

Rotisserie chicken Carrots potatoes

Friday

Minestrone soup

So far, I've made the gumbo, chicken Florentine, tacos, and Greek chicken salad. The gumbo was OK. I used dried beans that I started soaking the night before and I added creole seasoning to the gumbo. The rice needed more liquid and more cook time, even though I cooked it much longer than it asked for. The chicken Florentine was a good, quick meal. I used jarred Alfredo sauce to make it one step easier. I think it would be really good if I used home made Alfredo and pesto sauces. I think Our Best Bites has a good Alfredo sauce, if I remember correctly....I also used a full bag of spinach and added sun dried tomatoes. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a kid with the stomach flu right as we sat down to eat, so I had to eat mine cold. I bet it would have been really good when it was hot!

Tacos is always an interesting discussion in our house...and it was when I was growing up too. We currently have a German exchange student living with us, and he asked me how my tacos always looked so perfect and the filling never falls out...why, thank you! For starters, you eat tacos from the side, not the top! ;) But, the rest, I believe, is all in the construction. There were quite a few heated debates at the dinner table when I was younger about the proper taco filling order. I still stand by my order: meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, olives, scallions (most folks call them green onions, but they're really scallions...), sour cream, salsa. Really, there is no other way, no matter what other people try to tell you!

We had the Greek chicken salad yesterday. I scaled back the dressing to 10 servings, but then had to make a second batch. I used one batch for marinading the chicken, and the other for us to put on the salad. I used equal vinegar to oil, and I emulsified the oil into the rest of the dressing in the blender. I did add lettuce to the salad to make it more filling. The dressing was good...but I like the Our Best Bites Greek dressing much better. But, for a quick, easy dressing with me having all the ingredients on hand, it wasn't too bad!

The chicken for tonight's dinner is setting up in the fridge right now, and in a little while I'm going to pop it in the oven to roast nice and slow. I have a feeling that my house is going to smell amazing for the rest of the day! Too bad I got the kids' cold, and I can't smell much of anything right now.

Part of my resolution is to plan my menus on Thursdays and shop on Mondays, so I'm not stressing on getting my grocery list together before I go to the grocery store, leaving me plenty of time to shop while the older 2 are in school. So, here is next week's menu:

Sunday

No noodle lasagna (add sliced zucchini, use fresh spinach) Marinara sauce (double batch) Garlic bread salad

Monday

Parmesan Chicken Bake Spaghetti salad

(Idea courtesy of Cecily...she said to ignore the bad reviews it got...she loved it! I'm assuming she did some sort of GF breadding for it instead of the croutons.)

Tuesday

Italian Sausages with Ratatouille

Wednesday

Chicken Paprikash Nokedli salad

Thursday

Asian lettuce cups

Friday

Cauliflower Crust Pizza

Next week I'll let you know how the foods have turned out!

Cool New App!

OK, OK, OK...I know I promised you that I would post more often, but I've had a good excuse...really! I had surgery on 3 of my fingers (that, and I became addicted to Pinterest...evil, I know...)! OK...now that we have the excuse over with...I have to tell you about a wonderful new app/website I discovered (through Our Best Bites): ZipList! This wonderful site lets you "clip" recipes from all of your favorite recipe sites. You can then make any changes you want (so, say a reviewer of the recipe says there is way too much salt, you can cut back the salt...you can also add ingredients, make notes, etc.). After that, you add it to your recipe box. But the fun doesn't stop there! Once a recipe is in your recipe box, you can then add the ingredients to your grocery list! Their smart little programmer figured out how to suggest items that you might already have on hand, but it is as easy as checking or un-checking little boxes to make sure everything you need is on your list while everything you don't, isn't. But wait...it gets better! Not only is all of this free (my favorite word), but there is a free smart phone app as well! So, you can sync all this wonderfulness to your phone, so it is always with you when you are out and about. You can also sync with other people you are connected to. So, say your dear hubby really, really has a craving for a special treat, he can add it to the family grocery list (and it is your choice if he deserves it or not)...or, if he is running to pick up milk for you on his way home from work, and he wants to be extra nice, he can check the family grocery list to see what else he can pick up for you while he is there (and he would win some major bonus points). The possibilities are endless! Now, if they would add a menu planning tool, this thing would be the Marry Poppins of apps.


Now back to our regularly scheduled program (and can you believe I didn't get compensated in any way for the above paragraph?!)...

The lovely hubbs is at it again...no carbs. I'm dying, and it is only the second day! I went to my usual site, allrecipes, and looked up low carb recipes, and I was very disappointed. Lots of recipes full of BBQ sauce (and not specifically low carb either) and other no-no's for the gung-ho carb counters. So, I did a Swag Bucks search (and got 11 Swag Bucks...Wahoo!)

I ended up finding a bunch of new and tasty-sounding low carb meals on the Food Network site that won't make me feel like I'm on a diet too. And my saving grace is Monday nights, when the Dear stays at his mom's house, and I get to carb-fest with the kids! y step-daughter has been craving lasagna (which is odd for her), and she wants Stouffers, but I found a killer recipe that I'm going to try instead. Wish me luck!


With all that being said, here is the menu for the week (Saturday is leftovers night):

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday
Flank Steak with red wine vinegar and greens Baked Stuffed Tomatoes	Lasagna (make Sunday) Salad Garlic bread	Broccoli Beef Brown rice

Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Cauliflower “Mac” and Cheese with Kielbasa salad	Key West Crab Cakes with Mustard Sauce salad	Uncle Al's Sausage and Peppers Casserole salad

I will try to get back soon to post reviews of all the recipes I've been making over the summer. There have been some hits and fails, so hopefully I can remember everything!