Meal Planning Monday!

 

In this weekly post I share our meal plan for the week and recap to the previous week's plan and recipes if available.

This week's plan...

Monday: BLTs & chips, nothing fancy

Tuesday: Grilled Marinaded Chicken & baked sweet potatoes (from our CSA)

Wednesday: Chicken Stir Fry

Thursday: Bowling Alley

Friday:  Slow Cooker Beef Sliders with Pickled Peppers + CSA Veggies

This is a recipe I saw on Southern Living.  Doesn't it look so good?

VIA

Saturday: Leftover Beef Sliders

Sunday: We are going to Taste of Culpeper so we will be having wine and food at the little festival.

Last week's recap...

Monday Plan: Salad with Grilled Flank Steak & Luscious Lemon Cake

Eric's mom came over for dinner for her birthday.  We had a big salad with grilled flank steak and I made a Luscious Lemon Cake.   This salad is so good, if you haven't noticed we've eaten it the last 3 weeks.  We marinate the flank steak in Shenandoah Spice Company's Spicy Adobo Rub.  This is a local company but you can buy their products online if you are not local.

Tuesday Plan: Salad with Grilled Flank Steak

More of the same!

Wednesday Plan: Leftover Sausage & Peppers on Sandwiches with chips

We had sausage & peppers leftover from Sunday night and ate it on sandwiches with some chips we already had on hand.

Thursday Plan: Bowling Alley
I ate at the bowling alley and Eric ate sausage & peppers again.

Friday Plan: Zuppa Toscana
Failure...we went to try a new restaurant in town instead - Davis Street Pier Seafood.  Eric doesn't love seafood but I thought it was good.  I had a shrimp po boy which tasted great but could have had a bit more shrimp & Eric tried the fried shrimp which were huge!

Saturday Plan: Go to a restaurant
We had dinner plans with friends for tonight.  We went to a new Mexican restaurant we have in town called El Jaripeo and it was soooo good!

Sunday Plan:  Grilled Pizza
Ha!  We really failed this weekend.  We ended up going to the bar to watch football with our friends and ate a late lunch so we just skipped eating a real dinner.

Overall we stuck to our plan through the week but we went out 3x this weekend.  Oops!

Eat Local Wednesday 9.18 - Recipe Edition

We are at the beach this week so we skipped our normal CSA portion.  I thought I would just post some recipes that we have made with our CSA portions this year.  All of these things are things I never would have made if not for getting the ingredients in our portions.  I didn't have a clue what to do with rhubarb or leeks before this little adventure.  I would encourage you all to join a CSA if one is available to you.  You are able to support your local farmers, get the freshest produce available that week, and learn how to cook new things.   Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

  Cucumber Tomato Salad

Potato Leek Soup

  Fried Green Tomatoes

  Grilled Eggplant Pizza

  These are just a few of the many things we have done with our CSA portions this year.  You can find many others if you read through the archives or use the label buttons in the side bar if you are looking for something more specific. The only thing that these have in common is that I would NEVER have made them if it weren't for getting the CSA portions that we did.  Honestly, before this summer I didn't even like tomatoes, I had never bought eggplant or rhubarb or leeks, etc.  Try something new today!  

Cucumber Dill Salad

As per usual, I saw this recipe for Fresh Dill and Cucumber Salad on Pinterest.  I made some changes based on what I had and what I didn't.  It happens to be a clean eating recipe as well for those that do clean eating.  I had a few cucumbers from our CSA to use so I halved the original recipe and changed a few things around.  If you want a bigger/normal size recipe, just double the ingredients or refer to the original recipe.  This recipe is very easy and we all know I like simple recipes - the more ingredients and steps, the less likely I am to try it.  That's where Eric and I differ...he loves to cook complicated things.  We had this at the lake on Saturday as a side.

Ingredients
2-3 cucumbers
1/8 C white wine vinegar
1/2 tsp raw honey
1/2 tsp olive oil (original recipe uses safflowerL oil)
1 clove garlic, diced
1/8 tsp sea salt
1/4+ C fresh dill, roughly chopped

Step 1.  Slice the cucumbers.

Step 2.  Mix all other ingredients together in a bowl.

Step 3. Pour the mixture over the cucumbers and toss to coat.  I just put this all in a tupperware on Friday and shook it to mix it together.  That way I could just pack it as is to go to the lake and shake it up again before serving.  (Sorry for the blurry pic)

 

 

 

Cucumber Tomato Salad

Tonight we made a simple cucumber tomato salad with the cucumbers from our CSA portion.  This is a quick, flavorful, no-cook side dish.

Ingredients

2 cucumbers, thinly sliced
1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 large red onion, thinly sliced

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

2 T fresh parsley, chopped

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

3/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 T red wine vinegar

1/8 cup fresh dill, chopped

1 tsp sugar

S&P

Mix cucumbers, tomatoes, onion, basil and parsley in bowl.

Mix remaining ingredients in small bowl and stir together.

Pour olive oil mixture over cucumber mixture.  Stir/toss well together

Salt & pepper to taste.

Black Bean & Corn Salsa

You may think we are salsa obsessed as this is the 3rd type of salsa I have posted in the last few weeks and you wouldn't be wrong.  This black bean and corn salsa is good on chips but I'm sharing it today because it is even better on shrimp tacos and that is what is for dinner tonight.

Ingredients
15 oz can black beans, drained & rinsed
15 oz can corn, drained
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
2 green onions, chopped
3T balsamic vinegar
1T olive oil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
3T cilantro, chopped

 Mix together black beans, corn, red pepper, jalapeno and onion in large bowl.

Mix together balsamic, olive oil, salt, sugar, black pepper, and cumin in small bowl.

Add balsamic mixture to black bean mixture and stir together.

Garnish with cilantro and refrigerate until serving.

I'll be back tomorrow to share the recipe for the chipotle lime shrimp tacos that I am making to go with this salsa.

Restaurant Style Salsa

We love chips and salsa.  We also have enough cilantro to feed a small army so I decided to make some salsa for the weekend.  The basis of this recipe is from the Pioneer Woman.  I watched her make it once on her Food Network Show and you can find her recipe here.  After I watched her make it the first time, I promptly went to the store, bought all the ingredients and made it myself.  However, I did not take into account that when the Pioneer Woman cooks she is typically cooking for 792 people and that it would make tons.  It would also overflow my decently large food processor.  So this is my somewhat halved version of hers.

Ingredients

14 0z can whole tomatoes

10 oz can rotel tomatoes with green chilis

1/2 a small onion (if your onion is huge a 1/4 would work)

1 jalapeno (may want to use 1/2 if you don't like spicy, you can always add the other 1/2 at the end)

1 clove garlic

1/8 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cumin

2 T lime juice

1/2 C fresh cilantro

In order to make this, process all ingredients in a food processor.  I do this in stages so that everything gets a nice even chop to it.  This is the order I use - onion, jalapeno & garlic, add tomatoes, then add remaining ingredients.  So simple.  Even with the recipe halved you still get quite a bit.  You can eat this right away, but I think it tastes best if you refigerate it before serving.

Pasta Salad

Today I made some pasta salad to take to the lake for the weekend.  The menu for the weekend pretty much consists of anything that can be grilled and so this is something that can go with it all.  I would venture a guess that most of you have made something similar at some point.  Here's my version...

Ingredients:
1 box Ronzini Garden Delights Trio Italiano pasta
1 bottle zesty Italian dressing
1 cucumber
1 red pepper
1 pkg grape tomatoes
1/2 C shredded cheese

1.  Peel cucumber, quarter & slice.
2.  Dice red pepper.
3.  Half grape tomatoes.
4.  Cook pasta according to package instructions.
5.  Mix pasta, vegetables, and cheese.
6.  Top with approximately 1/2 bottle of zesty Italian dressing

7.  Refrigerate until serving & serve cold.
Note: You may want to add a little more dressing before serving.  The pasta tends to soak up a lot of the dressing.

Salad with Grilled Flank Steak

We had salad tonight with grilled flank steak for dinner tonight which allowed us to use lots of ingredients from our CSA portion this week.  The base of the salad was made of mixed greens and spinach and radishes from our CSA portion.  Then I had some leftover mixed veggies from a baby shower yesterday so we added those too - bell peppers, carrots, and broccoli - and some leftover onion from our nachos on Wednesday.  

The steak was simple to prepare.  Start with a piece of flank steak and pound it until it is fairly thin.  Coat the steak with olive oil and add a spice rub of your choice.  I picked up Spicy Adobo Rub from the Shenandoah Spice Company at the farmer's market yesterday so we used that.  (Just a sidenote....SSC is local company & their products are delicious.  We use them all the time).  Wrap the seasoned steak in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 45 minutes or so.  Then grill the steak to your liking.  It shouldn't need to grill for too long if you pounded the steak thinly at the start.  If you over cook flank steak you may find it to be tough and chewy but when properly cooked it is very tender.  Remove from the grill and let the steak rest covered with foil for 5+ minutes before you cut it into slices.

I'm a ranch girl but Eric also whipped up some salad dressing for his with herbs from our garden.  Fresh oregano, basil, and lemon thyme finely chopped then mixed with extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar and I have to admit it was pretty good.  Dinner will be followed up with a slice of yesterday's strawberry rhubarb pie.  It's pretty darn good and Eric was out of town all weekend so he hasn't gotten to try it yet.