Satisfied Saturday--September 18-24--Mom Helps Out

Last week's recipes were really good, and I mean really good!  For the turkey cranberry sandwiches, I used canned chicken (thought we had canned turkey, but I was wrong), and these were absolutely out of this world!  I love croissants anyway, but this was really great!  We love the Italian sausage and vegetable stew.  We actually still have some left.  Very easy to fix and tastes great!  We just had the chicken waffle pops, and they really were nice for a change.  I wasn't too sure about everything, but it was fun for something a little different.

There are two recipes that will carry over from last week--crock pot pork and apples and fruit salad.  My brother and sister-in-law should be out this week, so I'm going to wait on those.

This week, my mom chose some recipes, so I am going to pick my other 3 recipes from what she gave me.

Slow-Cooker Potato and Double-Chowder 

Slow Cooker Caramelized-Onion Pot Roast

Slow Cooker Lasagna

I happened to be looking for some desserts, and I found this link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2125977/5_fall_dessert_recipes.html?cat=22

Not sure which dessert I will make--probably the first one.  

Satisfied Saturday (August 21-27, 2011) with a little help from Tidy Mom!

First of all, I was basically pleased with last week's recipes.  I still have one to make--the tuna cobb salad.  I will probably make that tomorrow or Monday.  So I will just plan 3-4 recipes this week. 

Meals 1 and 3 from last week were outstanding!  I loved making biscuits into little flattened biscuits.  My only recommendation with that is to roll them out at thinly as you can, and do not use oil.  I did not even use cooking spray.  They were perfect when I made them thin.  And I used the leftovers of these with Meal 3.  I did not make meal 3 in the oven.  I just cooked the eggs and bacon, and I put that with the cheese on the flattened biscuit.  I then took hashbrowns and added all the veggies I had lying around to them.  They were really good!

This week, I decided to try something a little different.  I downloaded the tidy mom toolbar this week, and I love it!  I told her that I would try to plan my meals using that toolbar (it has a recipe section), and so I am.  Here goes.

Meal 1:

Turkey Ceasar Sandwich and some kind of mashed potatoes

She used Bob Evans mashed potatoes, but we have some other mashed potatoes we have on hand.  I will also add some other veggies.

Meal 2:

Cannellini Tuna Salad

I will probably add some toast or biscuits to this.

Meal 3:

Three Cheese Chicken Penne Bake

Dessert:

Apple 'N Peanut Butter Bread Pudding

Well, I look forward to trying this out!  Thank you, Tidy Mom!

Satisfied Monday? Meal Plan for the Week

All right, first of all, I know this was supposed to be done either Friday or Saturday, but I was so busy with the summer book  hop and working on reviews and giveaways and guest posts  that I just didn't have time!

As I have been reading through comment on the blog, I have had two people ask me to give you cheap, easy-to-make recipes.  I guess I hadn't realized that people actually wanted recipes from me.  But I will be happy to oblige.  I will normally post my menu plans for the upcoming week on Friday or Saturday. I will post recipes if I am allowed to.  But if they come from other publications and are not available on the internet, I will only be able to direct you to the cookbook and page number.  I plan to also review the previous week's recipes in the menu post.

So to this week.  I recently won the special issue of Everyday Food--Summer Issue.  I started looking through it, and I was so excited to find a wonderful section called 20 meals under 30 minutes (begins on p. 72 of that issue).  I had no trouble planning out my meals based on this section of the magazine.

Meal 1:  Orange-Glazed Pork Kebabs with Zucchini (p.72)
While I cannot copy this meal here, I can say that basically it is orange marmalade glazed pork chops (already had those in the freezer) that are cut up and grilled on skewers.  Then the zucchini (already had it on hand) is also grilled.  It sounds good to me.

Meal 2:  Chicken with Tomatoes, Feta, and Mint (p.73)
Again, no link to the recipe, but I had chicken, feta, and mint on hand. It is basically grilled chicken with the other items on the side.

Meal 3:  Summer Vegetable and Bean Tacos (p. 74)
We have tortillas, squash (in our garden!), bell pepper, and kidney beans.  I chose not to use black beans because we have kidney beans to use up.

Meal 4:  Thai Steak Salad (p. 79)  We had this tonight. I would give it a 4-star rating. We got really good steak--sirloin was on sale at Walmart.  The dressing was the issue.  I did not have fish sauce so I used a little bit of red chili sauce.  I loved how spicy it was, but I would have been in the minority. I added all sorts of oil, vinegar and more to make the dressing acceptable.  We didn't use English cucumbers, and we were sorry.  But not a bad dinner.  Easy and cheap (if you find a sale on beef).

Satisfied Saturday--Like I Promised!

As I promised last week, I planned  my meals for this week from the current Taste of Home magazine.  Last week's meals were good except I could not make the chicken meal since no store around had eggplant in stock! Oh well.  Here are this week's meals:

Meal 1: 

 Peppered Pork Pitas

Update--I made these last night.  I used tortillas and used a Greek yogurt sauce as a condiment.  Very tasty!

Meal 2:

Rich & Creamy Tortellini

Meal 3:

Blue Cheese-Stuffed Steaks

I will be using goat cheese instead of blue cheese--our store had no blue cheese!

Meal 4: 

Mimi's Lentil Medley

Meal 5:

Saucy Thai Beef Noodles